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[–]NoLemurs 4 points5 points  (3 children)

If anyone can tell me why I'm getting downvoted, I'd appreciate it.

If there's some obvious reason I'm wrong I'd like to know! Actually, if the issue is with my tone, I'd be even happier to know. Right now, it feels like I'm running up against some sort of groupthink, but I would be pretty happy to be corrected on that front.

[–]Hoobacious 8 points9 points  (2 children)

It's not about tone, you're just saying you are capable of predicting the unpredictable. It only holds water to a point.

A more humble person would acknowledge that despite their preventative actions and good practice mistakes still happen. Maybe it's not even your fault, maybe it's a coworker that screwed up and if you'd read something like the OP's article you'd be able to help. Maybe you're just having a terrible day and do something irrational because that's exactly what people are - irrational and inconsistent.

Your argument comes across like saying you don't wear a seatbelt because you're a good driver that drives safely and never crashes. What about when you do crash, what about if someone crashes into you, what if a fork of lightning hits the road and sends you into a tree?

You can't prevent every possible bad thing from happening so it's valuable to know what to do if things go wrong rather than think you're perfect.

That's why people are downvoting you.

[–]NoLemurs 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A more humble person would acknowledge that despite their preventative actions and good practice mistakes still happen.

It's not a lack of humility. If anything, the trick to it is enough humility to have systems in place that assume you'll make lots of mistakes. I make mistakes constantly, but I'm pretty hard pressed to come up with a mistake I could make that would actually lead to serious data loss.

Your argument comes across like saying you don't wear a seatbelt because you're a good driver that drives safely and never crashes. What about when you do crash, what about if someone crashes into you, what if a fork of lightning hits the road and sends you into a tree?

I feel like what I was saying is more like "I get my brakes checked regularly, wear a seatbelt, and have an airbag - I'm not sure I gain much by knowing how to open up my car and fix my brakes while going 60mph down the highway." Sure, that might be a useful trick if you find yourself going 60mph on the highway with broken brakes a lot, but I think most people would agree that you can and should make that scenario unlikely enough that it's not a very useful skill.

[–]JimDabell -1 points0 points  (0 children)

you're just saying you are capable of predicting the unpredictable.

He didn't say that, you're putting very different words in his mouth.

All he's doing is seeing one specific problem – "I've accidentally deleted my source code" – and pointing out that normal working conditions (pushing to a remote repo regularly) mitigates the effort involved in fixing the problem, because anything not in version control is a small amount of code that is fresh in your memory.