I know there are discussions on this site about version control, etc. And it appears that CellChangeTimes are used for this purpose, but how? As an individual user working alone, is this data potentially useful to me? The only thing I have ever wanted to do with it is to remove it. But I don't like changing default functionality without understanding the consequences, so I haven't set TrackCellChangeTimes to False.
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asked May 12, 2019 at 10:08
1 Answer
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I know there are discussions on this site about version control, etc. And it appears that CellChangeTimes are used for this purpose, but how
They have nothing to do with version control.
You might want to disable it so that it does not affect version control systems.
As an individual user working alone, is this data potentially useful to me?
If you want to collect statistics on when you changed the notebook, then yes.
https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/
What are the conseqences of setting TrackCellChangeTimes to False?
I never tried to disable this globally (I only disabled it per notebook), but I doubt that disabling it would break anything. The per-notebook settings are accessible in Cell -> Notebook History. The global setting is in the option inspector.
answered May 16, 2019 at 10:41
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$\begingroup$ The way I work, examining CellChangeTimes would probably be very misleading. Or at least confusing, and not very informative. I have cells created over a decade ago in recently created notebooks. It might be modestly amusing to see their antiquity, but it wouldn't lead me back to their origin. For an organized, methodical thinker, it may be valuable to track such details. For me, I produce enough clutter on my own, without a computer contributing to it programmatically. $\endgroup$ May 16, 2019 at 11:13
TrackCellChangeTimesto False and have not seen any problems due to that. $\endgroup$