This makes no sense to me. I mean, it's already on GitHub, which is a version control system. So he's doing more work by committing each version as a separate file, rather than making modifications in place?

sometimes, especially when I'm trying to figure out something new, I like keeping the old exploratory code so I can grep through it or easily compare different approaches. It's less cognitive load than dealing with tags or branches or versions.

usually I end up with old/try1 old/try2 ... old/tryn

once I've worked out the way I really want to go, then I nuke old.

git checkout 0110deadbeef -- file.py > new_name_for_temp_file.py

He probably bothered to learn "git add" "git commit -am" "git push" and nothing else.

Or maybe his CS friends helped put it on github.

Or maybe he's just to piss us off :)

What would you prefer he use, Dropbox?