[vineyardmike]

> The next big thing will be semantic code versioning. I.e. a tool that understands language syntax and can track when a symbol is changed.

Hmm maybe. I think this will come, but it may be more broken up through build tools that include this functionality, not a singular VCS. I think aggressive linting is starting to help with whitespace and formatting adding noise to diffs. We're seeing progressively more integrated build tools (Cargo, NPM, vs anything C/Java).

Personally, my bets are on the next VCS being more "workspace" centric as a next-step evolution. Any big change is going to come as we already change how we work. We're starting to see a lot of various tools that are basically VM/Container workspaces that you work out of. Cheap to spin up for each feature, instead of branching/pushing/pulling on one local repo. I think "thin client" reproducible workspaces are the next evolution.

What will VCS look like when everything is always-connected and (maybe?) cloud hosted? Maybe it'll allow "sharing" of workspaces, so you can build big features as a team (instead of feature branches being pushed/pulled). You'd certainly not store the "fat" history of changes locally, and big assets/binaries/etc would be better supported. Maybe it'll be built into one of these virtual workspaces as an overlay-fs, so its transparently auto-saved to a central store instead of manipulating the existing file system like git.