Click buttons in the IDE to add source control.
IDE says a bunch of files have been changed.
But I don't want to make changes to the files, I want to source control them.
Attempt to undo the changes. Click "discard changes" thinking it will put them back to how they were before clicking add source control. Get a warning dialog that this is not undoable, but that's fine because I don't want whatever changes it made to my files anyway.
All files are deleted and unrecoverable.

Like that experience sucks balls and it's reasonable that a person wouldn't expect "discard" == "delete". Also, from reading the GitHub thread, apparently at that time VSCode was doing a git clean when you clicked this. Which like...yeah why the hell would it do that lol? I don't think I have ever used git clean in my entire career.

[–] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Months worth of work. Going an entire day without committing should never happen. Also, rawdogging it without a backup?

Nope, dude learned a hard lesson. No sympathy. He thought that the rules of data storage don't apply to him and he got boned.

[–] rothaine@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

He did learn a hard lesson, but it sounds like this was exactly what he was attempting to rectify. "This project is pretty important to me. I should probably figure out how to use source control and put it on GitHub" but then by doing so, and due to some arguably poor UX decisions in VSC, destroyed the project.

If someone's trying to learn how to do something you can't just be like "well you should've already known how", you know what I mean?

Well actually, let's qualify that: there are cases where people try to jump right in the deep end. "I'm just learning woodworking! Step 1: build a new deck for my house", like yeah bro what are you doing, let's start with a birdfeeder or something.

But that's not what happened here. He tried to use the built-in GUI, which many would assume would be easier to learn than jumping right to the CLI, and it burned him in a way he didn't even realize was possible.