[wp-hackers] WordPress plugins SVN server malfunctioning?

Otto otto at ottodestruct.com
Tue Jan 15 19:32:15 UTC 2013


On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Justas Butkus <jbutkus at time.ly> wrote:
> It is just, that I hope, that Otto (and other developers of this magnitude),
> shall not throw phrases "you don't need version control to "get work done".
>
> You don't really mean that, do you, Otto?

Yes, I do.

> I see this as a dangerous slope - once you start down it, you may get as far
> as, that there is no need for coding standards, unit testing, documentation,
> and whatever else, that makes programming environment a decent place, not a
> zoo gone wild.
>
> No offence meant, it is just that I am in favour of culture and structure.
> :-)

I'm not so much in favor of those things in all cases. :)

Call me "ad-hoc" if you like, but when you say "structure", what I see
is "bureaucracy". I've been in enough programming shops to see this
sort of thing, and frankly I prefer the wild and sometimes messy world
of Open-Source.

- Standards are fine, if they're flexible and not rigidly enforced
beyond reasonable limitations.
- Unit Testing is fine, when you have a large and well-defined scope,
which you rarely have.
- Documentation is fine, but the best documentation for a programmer
should be the source itself.

I'm not discounting all-the-things, I'm saying that all things have
their place, and you don't need to rigidly adhere to them at all
times.

If you want to do local version control in your development, good for
you. I don't. I've never needed it before. If I wasn't sharing my code
with others or collaborating on a project with others, then I'd have
absolutely no need for version control in my life and probably would
not use it.

-Otto


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