The best versioning system is one that works seamlessly:
- File History in Windows
- Google Drive's auto-saving in browser/app, and Manage versions for non-Cloud files
- Version history in OneDrive
Systems like Git and Subversion are a massive overhead. They distract from real work.
So much time is spent on and put into resolving conflicts when it comes to collaborative coding.
But what if systems like Git and SVN could also be seamless? No need to save. Conflicts automatically resolved in most cases, or at least made so much easier to resolve. Goodbye fast forward.
Seamless versioning systems make themselves available to control only when you need them. When you want to go back, you'll look at a list of older versions and start comparing them, often manually, often side-by-side. So there's improvements to make there too.
But Git? It's a massive overhead.
- I have to save.
- Commit. Sign.
- Push.
- Fast forward. Pull. Fetch.
- Resolve conflicts.
It's honestly a complete barrier and nightmare. Developers should be worrying about the best ways to code, not the intricacies of a frankly obtuse and batty feature-mad glorified diff.
Imagine if every time you wanted to start your car, you had to manually plug in every wire. And if you want to indicate you're going left, you have to also plug in the indicator to the stalk, on top of actually checking if it's safe to turn left or not.
We need, and could do SO much better.
Code should be auto-saved, signed and pushed.
No commands at any time.
You're only prompted to resolve genuine non-trivial conflicts in a way that is extremely simple to compare, everything else is automatically handled.
Git/Subversion must and should be abstracted away.
AI could easily help with this too. Rather than reviewing lines of + and -, instead just "You refactored the database connection while Sarah optimized the payload parsing."
Coding should feel like solving a Rubik's cube and painting some art. Not like you need to run to the shops because you're out of red acrylic, and while you head out, there's a marathon in town today, you realise there's a hole in your shoe, and your peace lily is being a drama queen again.
Just like we don't write machine code anymore because we have compilers, developers shouldn't write Git commands, because the IDE should compile our actions into version history.
The best interface is no interface.
You should just code, and the history should just exist.
