Why should I use version control if I'm working alone and already back up regularly?

Question

I\'m working on a project:

• Just me, no collaboration/source code sharing
• I\'m already backing my code up regularly, and I can use Dropbox to restore mista

Answer 1

To play devil's advocate, I am thinking Distributed Revision Control is more useful than just a simple version control system that is centralized.

For an individual developer, distributed tools are almost always much faster than centralized tools. This is for a simple reason: a centralized tool needs to talk over the network for many common operations, because most metadata is stored in a single copy on the central server. A distributed tool stores all of its metadata locally. All else being equal, talking over the network adds overhead to a centralized tool. Don’t underestimate the value of a snappy, responsive tool: you’re going to spend a lot of time interacting with your revision control software.

Distributed tools are indifferent to the vagaries of your server infrastructure, again because they replicate metadata to so many locations. If you use a centralized system and your server catches fire, you’d better hope that your backup media are reliable, and that your last backup was recent and actually worked. With a distributed tool, you have many backups available on every contributor’s computer.

The reliability of your network will affect distributed tools far less than it will centralized tools. You can’t even use a centralized tool without a network connection, except for a few highly constrained commands. With a distributed tool, if your network connection goes down while you’re working, you may not even notice.