Saving Progress. . .
Do any of you make "save points" while programming? Such as make a separate zip file of you project folder and save it in a different location on your hard drive? and if you do, How often? every time a new feature is added? every time you walk away from it? I'm just curious. As for me, I do it every time I add one or two features, depending on how big they are.
closed account (3qX21hU5)
This is where the beautiful thing called version control/source control comes in handy :). Like git and subversion, mercurial, whatever you like. I would definitely use it if I were you and use it regularly on your larger projects. Its not only for working on projects with other people it also has many benefits for a solo developer.
Also it is not just the benifit of being able to recover the project if you computer gets fried or something. You can also revert to earlier versions of your projects if you make a bad design decision, you can create multiple branches for different features that way you are not experimenting on the main branch of your project, and of course the obvious of being able to easily work with a team on the same project or even file.
When I don't really care about other people seeing my code I will use github and git to help with development.
Otherwise if I want to keep something private I will just use git and my little home server to store and manage my projects.
It can be kind of hard to pick up version control software at first but it is more then worth a few days of learning it in my opinion and much better then saving a different zip file (Though that works to, so whatever works best for you).
Also it is not just the benifit of being able to recover the project if you computer gets fried or something. You can also revert to earlier versions of your projects if you make a bad design decision, you can create multiple branches for different features that way you are not experimenting on the main branch of your project, and of course the obvious of being able to easily work with a team on the same project or even file.
When I don't really care about other people seeing my code I will use github and git to help with development.
Otherwise if I want to keep something private I will just use git and my little home server to store and manage my projects.
It can be kind of hard to pick up version control software at first but it is more then worth a few days of learning it in my opinion and much better then saving a different zip file (Though that works to, so whatever works best for you).
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I use git all the time and love it. You can check out git-scm.com to learn more about git and source control in general. Source control is a broad topic and there are a lot of applications to manage it. If you understand the basic concepts though then you can use any software.
If you plan to use GitHub, there is a nice application specifically for it that simplifies the process a lot.
If you plan to use GitHub, there is a nice application specifically for it that simplifies the process a lot.
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closed account (3qX21hU5)
I agree if you are interested in learning it first get the basics down (Learn to pull, fetch, push, commit, add). Then I would recommend checking out a great GUI for git and mercurial(I think?) called SourceTree http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/ which will simplify the more advance aspects of source control. Though it is windows only but I am sure there are others like it for *Nix
Otherwise there is always the command line if that is your style, or plenty of other GUI apps out there for use with source control.
Otherwise there is always the command line if that is your style, or plenty of other GUI apps out there for use with source control.
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Well I looked at both of these and I think I'm just going to stick to the zipfiles for now, thanks though!
For my own home projects a zip is fine. I just label it with the date and time and zip up the directory. I make one every time I plan to make any major adjustment to working code.
When the project is finished, I just delete all the old stuff. If I make a mistake, it is easy to revert to a previously-working version.
For home-brew stuff, this is typically all you need. But if you plan to work with:
(1) other people
(2) very complex projects
then it is better to follow the version control advice above.
When the project is finished, I just delete all the old stuff. If I make a mistake, it is easy to revert to a previously-working version.
For home-brew stuff, this is typically all you need. But if you plan to work with:
(1) other people
(2) very complex projects
then it is better to follow the version control advice above.
Well that's all I'm doing now anyway, mostly learning, but I had tried this project tutorial in the past and when I got to a certain point in it, it wouldn't work, I looked at it for weeks and weeks, and never found it. I can't remember what the output window said anymore, but I was kicking myself in the ass for not at least saving it while it still worked.
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I use VCS just because I like to look back and see how my code develops, and also because it makes me confident that I won't lose code to a virus or hard drive crash.
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