mindful iterations

Early in my professional coding career (which at this point, is just over 8 months), I was told to commit early and commit often.

Originally I thought that this was just so that important work wouldn't be lost, should a computer crash - temporarily or long term. Eight months later, and I have a confession to make - I don't commit nearly as often as I should, and when I do, there's usually a long string of A's or M's and a bulky commit message.

In addition to my embarrassing confession, I also have a nice realization - committing isn't only for security's sake. I've found it to be a very nice precaution in helping to make sure that a certain change doesn't break shit. Nothing like wading through diffs and commit logs to figure out what the hell and when the hell you broke your app.

It also seems invaluable when it comes to making sure that if you had one iteration that was close to working, you can get it back relatively easily.

Of course, all this would be true for me if I made a more consistent habit out of committing.

When it comes to committing, I'm making a vow right here, right now, to become more committed. Yes, I'm committing to committing.

One of the things I used to say about being a 'baby programmer' was that I didn't have bad habits and could be molded quite well. And here I've been, getting into some bad habits. No more, I say. No more! Boo on you, Bad Habits. Boo on you.

And speaking of version control, I've been playing around with git this evening. I've also been messing around with mercurial.