I was introduce to version control around 2003 (svn) and before that at small companies we would just ftp files around because we all worked on separate parts of the codebase. I didn't work at a large company (IBM, Microsoft, etc) but I'm really curious how companies with that many developers handled source control and conflicts before the likes of git and git[hub|lab] etc.
There was several generations of source control before git came on the scene.<p>Wikipedia has an overview here <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control</a>
For unix I started with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System#His...</a>
Version control coincided with programs being stored on tape as opposed to punched cards (the shift to tape was gradual over the 1960s, and the first VCS around 1969).<p>So before version control came along, companies were only running programs small enough to fit on a deck of punched cards.
I've been developing software for a living for 40 years now and we've always had version control. Like many things in software, they've steadily improved, and Git is awesome.
Back in the early 2000s I zipped my development branches at the start of every day.<p>somecode.20010405.zip
somecode.20010406.zip
...<p>There were version control systems available, they were only a pain to use (and more painful getting other devs to use them properly.) heck, I cannot get other devs to use git properly.