For thous of you who do not know, source control is a way to manage file changes on a program being worked on by multiple people at once. Version control is keeping a copy of the older versions of the program in case you want to backtrack. Source control is a related tool that helps with the merging of shared code edited at the same time by making the process of integrating contradictory changes relatively painless.

A common tool for both is subversion. (yes, i know, it sounds like someone overthrowing the government or something, but not that subversion) Subversion is a powerful and useful tool that can make the task of working with others on a large program much easier. Especially if the group is too busy to be able to always meet, or if some prefer working from home. This can be one of the most frustrating parts of group programing. Especially considering that not all computer programmers have an exactly outgoing and social personality...

One of the biggest problems I personally found when working with subversion, was the terminal. Subversion, or svn, is generally accessed directly and only from the terminal. Especially to an amateur like i was, having to work with an abstract interface like the terminal to access, send and retrieve the files in the subversion repository, can be quite a challenge and can easily develope into disdain for the entire system. Though i freely admitted that svn could be useful, the terminal interface made it so cumbersome to use, that even with the many a shortcut we learned for it, using svn still involved a considerable amount of PAIN.

To solve this problem, for thous who are not familiar with the terminal and want to use svn quickly, especially, I recommend a program called tortoise. It has a simple and familiar windows interface that wraps svn in a usable format, while keeping most of the functions the same. And if ever more versatility is needed, THEN you can use the terminal.

Tortoise also takes care of the rather annoying problem of always typing -m "~~~" to enter in the required comments for your submission lest you get the mystery screen of how-the-hell-do-i-get-out-of-here by providing a comment box. this fixes the annoyance of using svn while keeping all of it's power in tact.

As for whether or not to use svn, unless you can get it done in about an hour, yes. I'd recommend it even for small projects and working alone. Mainly due to the revision control. That's always nice. But also, i can't really think of a reason not to use it. Can you?