I love github. This wonderful version control software is a mainstay of our lab’s research. Basically, it lets us all work together on large software projects without getting in each others’ way.
When you use github you can branch off and work on your own stuff, and then merge your changes back into the main project, usually without any issues between you and all the other people who are doing the same thing.
But github requires a certain amount of setup. And sometimes my project is just too small for that, and I want to kind of fly under the radar.
For that I fall back on the simple DIY version control that I’ve been using forever. For very simple and small projects — the kind that take only a few days from soup to nuts — I have a practice of copying the entire project over every time I make significant progress.
So I end up with a whole sequence of copies of the same project, each a little more advanced than the one before it. This has the advantage that I can easily visit earlier versions, and even grab snippets of code from them to use in the latest version, all without missing a step.
This wouldn’t work at all if I were collaborating on something large with other people. But for those little skunkworks projects, it’s awesome.