Organizing your programming

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by MamaSpoldi

I strongly agree that the goal of FIRST is providing skills that will help students in the real world. But I think that you may be overestimating the universality of Git. I realize that it is a big part of the online, shareware community and it is great that it is being used by FIRST teams as well. But I have been a software engineer for over 30 years and have only seen it used on one commercial project that I have been part of. I do not want to imply that it is not used commercially but to point out the commercial world is vast and does not always reflect what you see/hear on the net.

I'm into year 10 of my current career path and this project I'm on now is the first time I've seen and used git. Coincidentally I was learning to use git for the first time right around build season in 2015, so I was learning it at the same time my programming students were! That led to some fun times.

Yes, the bottom line is that students need to get used to the idea that they don't work in isolation - that there is version control, team collaboration, and the concept of risk management (don't deploy new code until it has been tested!) (One of my proudest moments this year was actually when our most "enthusiastic" programming student said "I think we should just leave it for now. It works, and the drive team is doing well with what we've got. We can fix [the remaining issues] in between now and our next competition." YES!)

Git is a good system but it is not the only system and it is not the best system. There is some thinly-veiled "git is best" attitude in this thread.

Prior to git, I've used ClearCase/ClearQuest, a stupidly obtuse one called Continuus, and CVS.

I do like gitflow and I'm getting used to Github, but I'm told that coming from a ClearCase mindset is actually making it harder for me to wrap my head around git concepts. So I totally understand if students are confused.

The YouTube link posted earlier is a great presentation.