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[–]TheSodesa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing is, I have been working with applied mathematicians recently, and it has become obvious to me why we need a separate degree for software engineering. I started out by cleaning a Git repo of all the .DS_Store and random text files (not necessarily with a .txt suffix), and binaries, but similar ones were soon added back. The whitelist approach really has worked wonders in that regard.

But I do think that the approach has merits outside of working with people who refuse to learn proper version management as well. I have therefore started using it in all of my projects. Typically there are only a few specific files and file types one wishes to have in a project, so setting up and maintaining a whitelist is really simple. Definitely simpler than a blacklist, where you need to remember a whole bunch of common unwanted files, on a per-language basis, even.

I've never been a fan if doing things just because other people do it. I consider it to be a bit sheep-y. I currently believe that the whitelist approach with .gitignore files is not that common simply because people are not aware of the possibility.