Cloud Backups

A few days ago, someone was robbed and they had their computers stolen.  What the computers contained was months long source code for an important project.  That computer also happened to have the only copy of the source code.  Suffice to say, there were many unhappy customers because they paid for an incomplete product and are most likely feeling buyers' remorse.

Backing up source code is no laughing matter, because a catastrophes may be uncommon, but when they do happen, you had better be prepared for the worst.  It is especially shameful when creating backups is extremely easy and painless.  Google Project Hosting provide free online storage for code backups so you have no excuse to not have a backup of everything important you have online.

Having a backup is also not just useful for cataclysmic events, but they also help speed up development.  Backups are extremely important in the configuration management systems.  They are a set of ideas of how software developers would develop their programs.  Using configuration management, software developers will have a version to fall back on, so can code all they want and if they run into something problematic that requires everything to be reverted, they have something to fall back on to.  They can also created their own versions without tampering with the original code.  It's a very handy thing to have in a group project, especially when these groups can grow to huge sizes and it becomes a logistical nightmare having to keep everyone up to date.

Initially, I found configuration management systems to be somewhat time consuming as I only considered myself as the sole developer.  By thinking about how it would benefit groups, it sounded much more appealing.  When I first started using Google Project Hosting, I found it confusing as everything was not immediately apparent to me.  There were not any descriptions of which link went to where.  It took me a while to find out how to upload my Robocode.  After I got done uploading, something seemed to click and I grasped everything Google Project Hosting offered easily.  I was able to add another committer to my project, create labels, add wiki pages, and edit my front page so the wiki page shows on the front page.

I have learned how important it is to have a backup not just for in case something happens, but for software development.  I also learned how to use Google Project Hosting as a repository for all of my source code.  It was not hard to learn to use it because what I mostly did was click on every link and read everything that it told me to do.

My Google Project can be found at http://code.google.com/p/roocode-wca-chinpogum/