Nearly a blogging trifecta

By: Chris Brandsma Category:General PostTag: Esoterica, New Post:

On the front page of DotNetKicks is a nice little article on using source control. And I hate it. Not the article itself, it is a nice read actually, very valid. So before you read why I hate it, please check it out.

http://blog.lavablast.com/post/2008/02/I2c-for-one2c-welcome-our-new-revision-control-overlords!.aspx

OK, lets start with the basics: Source Control is vitally important to software developers. If you are not using it shame on you! Go beat your head into a wall until you comply. Really. Subversion, Source Safe, Team Systems, etc; pick one and use it. End of story.

But I have two very petty complaints with the article:

Use of overly tiered title. Any title starting with “I, for one, welcome our new <insert noun here> overlords!” should be banned, and further use should lead to sanctions.
There is a freaking CAT in a SINK! Why? Because someone, somewhere, thought cats in odd places were cute — and we have been paying for it ever since. The only redeeming quality about the cat is that the author did not use the generally accepted animal speech: “IM N UR SINK, MAKEN IT DURTY”. Maybe you could go with: “Brush ur teeth now, I dares you”. But the author restrained and left that out. I applaud you — even though overly sentimental women everywhere are screaming that you left a job undone. Be strong, leave it alone.

So, a trifecta was narrowly averted and I can read the article and not gouge my eyes out, merely shaking uncontrollably. Thank you.

8 thoughts on “Nearly a blogging trifecta”

OK, now that I know how to get your attention I will put together a good slide deck for code camp. :-).

Chris,

Next week, you’ll get to see a dog with a cowboy hat!

“ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US” 🙂

LOL. This is an awesome post.

Hah, awesome.

…but, really, sourcesafe? in this day and age? c’mon now 🙂 I mean, I guess it’s marginally better than nothing, but if you’re starting from scratch anyway save yourself the heartache and go with either SVN (free) or, if your comfortable with SourceSafe, check out SourceGear’s Vault (free for 1 user).

I know, blah blah blah, preachin’ to the choir, etc.

@Tony,

SourceSafe is still for the company that says: “If I have to choose between a Microsoft product and someone else’s product, I’ll pick the Microsoft product”. And believe me, there are a lot of those around these days.

Your next argument should be: well, use Team Systems. Team Systems is great, if you are working with a team of developers. Say somewhere on the order of more than 4. For a team of 4 or less, SourceSafe is still a viable option — and is better than nothing.

For me personally, I use Subversion.

@Jason: Thank you for the warning.

@Darrel: I’ll just make sure your Code Camp session conflicts with something else I want to attend.

Team System is considerably more expensive than the alternatives, both in terms of licenses (assuming you don’t get them with some other MSDN package) and in support though. But I know you already know all this, again, mostly I’m just picking on SourceSafe 🙂

And, if I were at a shop that forced me to use VSS, I’d keep a local SVN repository for my work and synchronize with VSS on a regular and predictable basis – just can’t trust it.