- Joined
- Jul 31, 2001
- Messages
- 916
I work as a web programmer and I have noticed that when I'm working on a complex site or application with a lot of code to it I will sometimes find that files that did work suddenly don't any more and when I look at them, it turns out they have somehow regressed to versions that are not only weeks out of date but could never have worked.
Its easy to think that there is some lame attempt at version control going on, but sometimes this happens on projects where I'm the only person dealing with the code and the versions that are regressed to are ones that no longer exist. It is frequently annoying and seems resistant to scrutiny- the more you watch for it the less it happens. It's like there are annoying pixies swapping files around when you're not looking.
We've coined the phrase "code decay" to describe this effect. I would be intrigued to know whether it happens to anyone else and, given that digital data clearly can't actually decay to older versions, any suggestions as to what is going on.
Its easy to think that there is some lame attempt at version control going on, but sometimes this happens on projects where I'm the only person dealing with the code and the versions that are regressed to are ones that no longer exist. It is frequently annoying and seems resistant to scrutiny- the more you watch for it the less it happens. It's like there are annoying pixies swapping files around when you're not looking.
We've coined the phrase "code decay" to describe this effect. I would be intrigued to know whether it happens to anyone else and, given that digital data clearly can't actually decay to older versions, any suggestions as to what is going on.