I&#x27;ve seen this sort of version control done twice in a professional setting, and both were by programmers much more gifted than me.<p>I once saw a guy who wrote a robust e-store web app in C.  Not C++, but C.  Tons of complexity, and it worked <i>fine</i>, but then when I dived in to work on it, it was a nightmare.  He told me &quot;You want main_app.version3.old.c, That&#x27;s the one that gets compiled and pushed to the production server.  Not main_app.c, that one&#x27;s old and we don&#x27;t use it anymore.&quot;  He built a build system from scratch, did his own version control in his head, and kept everything in one monolithic C file.<p>Of course, he was the shittiest <i>software developer</i> I&#x27;ve ever seen.  Just a brilliant <i>programmer</i>.  He needed a manager the way a jet needs a pilot.  Sadly, he was 30 years my senior, and not amenable to being told what to do, so after a long talk with our CEO, we decided to let him go.  He was the only one who knew how our system work, but I built a comparable one using best practices and open-source software in less than a month.