What is “version control”, and why should you care?

Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later.What is “version control”, and why should you care? Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later.

The most obvious is the single point of failure that the centralized server represents. If the hard disk the central database is on becomes corrupted, and proper backups haven’t been kept, you lose absolutely everything — the entire history of the project except whatever single snapshots people happen to have on their local machines.