Version Control is Your Friend

Version control is very helpful for a variety of reasons. Git is the obvious choice right now for my needs. Works everywhere, and has all the features for someone that makes short scripts could need. For myself, version control is beneficial for two reasons; 1) referencing older versions of some code 2) centralizing my editing area.

Being able to reference older version of your code can be quite useful. I am not running a major enterprise where I might need to rollback immediately. But I do make changes that I don't always like the result of. I try to keep commits frequent and well noted in case I need to go back and find something.

But the biggest benefit to me is actually being able to centralize all my editing. Before if I needed to make a change to my NGINX config I would need to log in, navigate the directory I need, then edit on Nano or VIM or what have you. Now, I can open up my editor on my main rig, commit all changes I need, and pull it down in the server session.

This still requires me to ssh in to my servers, but I might be adding a cron job in the future that pulls the repository at regular intervals. Meaning I would not need to log in to my server for the config files to update. I don't make enough changes for this to be relevant right now, but I would be helpful down the line.

In short, you should learn version control, it will definitely help you out at some point in the not so distant future!