I don’t do as the parent does, but I’ve thought about it. The main difference is that a remote repo still requires an action to achieve backup parity. Using Dropbox your changes would start syncing the second you type :w. So even if you don’t finish the current development thought-line and commit upstream, you’re still backed up.

Still not sure if it’s a good idea or not, but not being able to ignore node_modules was the real blocker for me before.

They're completely different tools with different benefits, and both can be used together. VCS remembers only what you commit and push, per-project. Dropbox remembers your entire workspace as a whole, automatically. It remembers every time you save any file (more detail than you usually need, but can be handy in an emergency). It also remembers which projects you have on the go, and how they're organised. It remembers all the unpushed stuff within each project, including uncommitted changes, stashed changes, experimental branches, gitignored notes and ideas, even the knowledge of which branch you are currently on. Your entire workspace. And by 'remembers', I mean it automatically syncs all that stuff to all your devices, so your workspace is always exactly as you left it, whichever device you're now using.

>Why not just use github, gitlab or other VCS?

You can only revert changes to states that you have explicitly stored and uploaded. Dropbox does that automatically any time you save a file. That simplicity makes it more reliable. You will never lose anything you saved. And with rewind you can go back to any point in time. The advantage of git comes from its branch/merge features. But for a single developer on a small project that doesn't know git well that's not worht the complexity.