Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

> I've encountered developers who don't use version control. That doesn't imply that you shouldn't use version control because everyone doesn't.

His argument wasn't usage, it was controversy. Presumably, these developers you've encountered aren't announcing that version control sucks and you shouldn't use it. They're just not using it themselves, and you'd probably be right if you guessed that they wouldn't have a rational reason for avoiding it. Contrast this with TDD.

View on HN

> Presumably, these developers you've encountered aren't announcing that version control sucks and you shouldn't use it.

I've seen people argue that. The fact that people argue something is bad doesn't mean that it is, in fact, bad.

There's a difference between a few people arguing and a controversy. Admittedly, it's a fuzzy difference, but you could also use the degree of controversy as an indication of just how off the idea is. With DVCS, not much, with TDD, you could conclude that the idea needs more development before you can really rely on it.

| There's a difference between a few people arguing and a controversy.

Only on average. We are fully capable of being irrational as large groups...

> you could also use the degree of controversy as an indication of just how off the idea is.

That's exactly the ad populum fallacy, so while you could do it, you probably shouldn't.

Not quite. Ad populum describes the position that a proposition is true based on its popularity. Having doubts of a proposition's truth is not the same thing.

Using the degree of controversy of an idea as a metric for "just how off the idea is" is exactly using the popularity of the proposition which is negation of the idea in question as a metric for the truth of that same proposition, and so is exactly the ad populum fallacy.

When version control was new and when dvcs's were new, there was a lot of controversy. And the period when something is 'new' and controversial can be quite long, but people tend to forget and history tends to repeat itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com