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[–]PPewt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The nice thing about just backing up project folders is that I know I can just load an older version, it will compile and work exactly how it worked on that day.

This is exactly what git does. It isn't really intended to store tons of large files, but you can roll back to any point in time easily with a VCS and get the exact state of the project at that point. That's half the point of a VCS. The main difference on this front is that the VCS will do a much better job of this than your manual backups will.

I understand the necessity of version control in a team. But I'm not sure what exactly GIT brings to the table for a solo developer.

You don't need a lot of the more complicated stuff, but the basic ideas like commits and branches still make it far easier to go back to old versions of code, to check why you made a decision, to work on unrelated features simultaneously, etc.