For the Ventura County WebMob Meetup in January, I did a presentation titled “Saving Your Code with Git.” Since revision and version control is such a huge part of software development, I volunteered to present Git, which has become the de-facto standard due to the emergence of hosted repository services such as GitHub and Atlassian’s Bitbucket.
I started with a brief history of Git, which I got mostly from the detailed Wikipedia entry. I felt it was important to understand how Git came to be and that it manages the largest open source project on the internet – the Linux operating system. Understanding its roots was one of the things that helped me grasp the power of the software.
From there, I did a quick overview on how to get started with Git, did a short demo, and provided resources to learn more. One of my other goals with the presentation was to explain the difference between GitHub and Git itself. For some reason, many who are new to Git think that you can only use it if you are using GitHub, which is not true at all. Git can be used locally for any project you want, including version control of word processing and text documents.
Git is an even more essential tool for a developer to have in their toolbox than Sass, which I presented to the group in November. Why? Git is universal across all types of development. It applies whether you are doing front-end, back-end, database, or any kind of software development. Git is a program that you want to spend the effort to become proficient at given how widely used it is for development, and it’s a great way to make a name for yourself by releasing your own projects onto GitHub and contributing to others.
If you are interested in getting started with Git, browse the presentation, and make special note of the resources on slide 8 and 9. There are some excellent tutorials listed there that will help put you on the path to becoming proficient with the tool.