Version Control lets you do two things:
- Keep all (old) versions of your files around without cluttering up the structure on your disk.
- Allows more than one programmer work on the same project without getting in each other's way (by overwriting, deleting, changing, moving, ... files).
A nice explanation is on
Visual Guide to Version Control. Personally I use
Subversion (which plays very nice with Windows and is integrated into my IDE
Komodo), but if you got a lot of people working on the same project
GIT comes highly recommended nowadays.
Perl5 has recently moved to GIT.
CountZero
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James