[pinusc]

Strongly disagree. Learning complex girl workflows is unnecessary unless you're in a team. However, learning the absolute basics is really easy and has benefits over "storing previous versions in a zip file". By absolute basics I mean add, commit, reset. If you add basic branching (checkout and merge) you already get a very powerful tool to experiment with your code without worrying about fucking it up. Then you can learn the rest when you have a use for it—log, diff, even rebase.

But here's the thing: without VCS, if you ever do need anything slightly more sophisticated... you're on your own.

Yesterday I was helping a friend debug some code from an intro CS class, and I was so stressed out about changing something whithout being able to revert it, because he obviously wasn't using git.

Granted, I really wish there was a mainstream git alternative, ideally simpler, without the more complex features catering to large teams. At least there's a lot of graphical interfaces on top of git, which make it really intuitive to use and can bring the great VCS benefits without the investment of learning git. Maybe simple interfaces to complex tools is a good middle ground.

[conductr]

From personal experience, I’ve self learned over a dozen of languages, a bunch of frameworks, databases, etc. and shipped many products and side projects as a solo hobbyist/entrepreneur and I’ve failed adopting/learning git at least a handful of times. I also have not been hampered by my lack of source code tools. I have managed by using my normal process of zipping or creating backups of the project root folder at certain points. Same as I’d do with any other task.

Anyways just pointing out that it can be complicated to some people and it’s completely unnecessary. I still can’t think of a single problem I’ve encountered over 20+ years of doing this that git would have helped me avoid. My code bases always have forward momentum and rolling back any part is unusual for me. But if I needed to, I have a backup.

Had I followed your advice, the git roadblock would have prevented me from shipping anything.