I&#x27;ve brought the subject of version control for non-programming document control with programmer and non-programmer friends. The result is usually hostility.<p>Programmers are taught that storing anything but text based code files under version control is EVIL. Probably because old version control systems would corrupt binary files. And because hard drives were small. I&#x27;ve stored firmware images and project files under version control for two decades myself. Other programmers I&#x27;ve had to deal with usually froth at the mouth a bit at that.<p>Non-programmers have trouble grasping that there is a problem with the standard network drive full of random word docs and exel files &#x27;system&#x27;<p>A more difficult issue is most file formats were never designed with diff tools in mind[1][2]. There is chicken an egg problem. If you have no diff&#x2F;merge tool for a file format. No one thinks to put it under version control. If it&#x27;s never under version control, no one is motivated to create diff&#x2F;merge tools.<p>[1] Big one for me has always been CAD files, schematics and PCB layouts. This however is getting better of late.<p>[2] I seem to remember reading someone commenting that merging xml based IDE project files as being particularly painful. (merge changes, fire up the IDE, IDE decides project is corrupt and helpfully deletes it, @#$^#!)