Git and GitHub: An Introduction

October 31st, 2014

What are Git and GitHub? Well, if you can think of a time long ago when aspiring nerds in garages interacted with their computers through the command line, you're halfway there. These people needed a way to save and control versions of files. Hence, Git. Git is a software that you use via the command line. Its basically saves copies of your work, allowing you to go back to previous saves and create parallel versions that can later be merged with the master/live version. Today, we might think of this as Time Machine on a mac, or the ability to track changes in a Google Doc. While technology's user-interface has improved, developers still like doing all this version control using Git and the command line.

The benefit of using Git for version control is that you can refrain from making changes to the working version of your file, and instead create a branch to create changes to while your working version stays live/current. The new branch can then be merged with the working version of the file once you're satisfied it's error free. Another benefit is being able to go back to previous versions of your project, in case errors are found in the current version.

GitHub is entirely separate from Git. While Git works with local storage on your machine, GitHub provides storage in the cloud, like Dropbox or Google Drive. This way many people can access the same project, work on the same files, and push and pull changes to/from the working version. GitHub is a powerful collaboration tool--comments made on code incrementally saved can drastically change the course of the project.

To conclude, git helps you save files and control versions of those files on your computer. GitHub is an online repository for those files, so many can access them.