> Note: This was at a time when we didn’t have version controls like git and people didn’t commit for every small feature. Change list sometimes varied between 10 lines to 25 files during a refactor.

Does this mean you weren't using version control at all or you weren't using a distributed version control system? The former would surprise me since CVS, SVN, and similar tools have been around for years and are a lot easier than emailing patches back and forth.