I recently spent the time to learn SVN (Subversion); moreover it was my first Revision / Versioning management system. I'll start out by saying, while I was learning it I thought the whole way through, "This is a waste of time", with very few "thats neat" mixed in. I missed the boat when CVS was becoming the hip thing to do, and wrote it off the first ten thousands times as buzz or something that was just as easily accomplished with `tar cf`. Having learned it, I was wrong. I can't defend it yet, because I still had 50% of the functionality as before, which is 90% of the importance of the system, but having it; and, not being able to adequately justify the polish of it, doesn't mean I don't appreciate the system for what it is worth. If someone wanted a close analogy to working with a revision system, as compared to working without it, the closest thing I can think of is using CGI, vs utilizing a modern web framework.

While I realize that revisioning systems are often as polarized as text-editors I have to ask a more pertinent question How many monks don't use a version management system at all? And lets say we get a poll going for this!