Published in · 6 min read · Mar 28, 2018
Before you start reading this article, let me tell you “Why” you should learn about GitHub and “Why” you should waste your valuable time reading this blog?
Why learn GitHub?
Do you know that many recruiters or interviewers ask for GitHub profiles? A good GitHub profile can impress the interviewer. But the sad part is only few candidates have a GitHub page on their resumes and most of them are not well maintained. So you definitely get better chance to stand out by keeping an up-to-date GitHub profile. Check out this blog “How to Make GitHub as Your New Resume”.
GitHub is undoubtedly a valuable skill to have as a programmer, not only in the workplace, but also personally. It’s the most popular source code hosting facility out there, and it’s still growing. Millions of developers use GitHub to share code and build businesses. In 2017, the GitHub community reached 24 million developers working across 67 million repositories.
I think this much data is enough to get started with GitHub. In this article, I’ll try to cover the good parts of GitHub and how to get started. But before that let me just tell about something. According to Josh Schwartz, a data Scientist, it has been proved that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more you tune out. And it happens with everyone. When readers start reading an article, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway. I know that you’re not going to stick around for long. So let’s talk about some REWARDS that you get on completion of each section of this article.
Here’s what you get.
- A free .me domain and SSL certificate for 1 year.
- PluralSight Premium Membership free for 3 months.
And many more…
Are you a student interested about technology? Are you a Freshman who is new to Programming? Are you interested about developing websites? Are you making any computer science project and looking for free project management platform? If any of these questions satisfies for you then this article is worth reading.
GitHub is a repository hosting service. Think of it as the "cloud" for code.
This can be a simple definition of GitHub. Now let me give you a scenario which can better explain the above definition. Let’s say you are a Computer Science Student and you started making your portfolio website. Now in the process of making it you get stuck at a point and you want your friend to help you with the code. But the sad part is he’s living at a distance. Now you’re completely stuck. This is where GitHub can actually help you solving this problem by saving it in the cloud, which simply means both you and your friend will be having a copy on both of your PCs.
Now let’s consider another scenario where you and your team is working on a software project. Let’s say you have found some issues with the software and you’ve changed the code; now at this point your team members wouldn’t know the changes you have made and vice versa.
This is where the GitHub magic comes.
1. GitHub lets you save your code online.
2. GitHub will allow all the developers of a project to see what changes the other one has made.
3. It allows you to discuss issues in your code with other developers.
GitHub is like portfolio for programmers. Companies loves programmers that invest themselves in the community. In fact, learning how to use it can give you a really good job. Increasingly companies are asking to see a GitHub account, followed by references. GitHub is your new resume, build it wisely.
As I have mentioned above that you’ll be getting some REWARDS after completion of each section of this blog, here is your first reward.
Reward:
- .ME domain free for 1 year
Instructions: Open any web browser and type GitHub Student Pack or simply click this link. Use your university mail ID to be able to use this benefit. Then search for Namecheap from the list and follow the instructions to get a free .ME domain free for 1 year. If you’re facing any problem you can follow this video tutorial.
Prerequisite: A GitHub account. Yes, I know that all of you know this.
- It’s not yet over. By signing up for GitHub Student Pack, you can also get access to all these cool stuffs.
- AWS Educate: Access to the AWS cloud, free training, and collaboration resources
- DigitalOcean: Simple cloud hosting, built for developers. Worth $50 in platform credit for new users.
- GitHub: Unlimited private repositories (normally $7/month) while you are a student.
- Microsoft Azure: Free access to 25+ Microsoft Azure cloud services plus $100 in Azure credit.
- And there are many more…….
In thisarticle, there are a few words I’m going to use repeatedly. Here’s the big ones:
Repository: You can think of it as a folder or storage space where your project files can be stored. Sometimes GitHub users shorten this to “repo.” You can keep code files (like : HTML, CSS, JS etc.), text files, image files, inside a repository.
Fork: Fork can also be termed as copy or clone. Let’s consider the previous example where you were building a website for which you needed some help from your friend. Now your friend have found out some issues and wants to change something on your project. But here, he can not directly make any changes to the main file so he’ll make a copy of it. This is what forking means.
Pull Request: In simplest form, pull requests are a way by which developers notify their team members that they have completed a feature and asking your permission to add your changes to the main file. For example, you have made some changes to your project now you want your teammates to review your changes. If there are any problems with the changes, teammates can post feedback in the pull request.
Version Control: Basically, the purpose Git was designed to serve. When you have a Microsoft Word file, you either overwrite every saved file with a new save, or you save multiple versions. With Git, you don’t have to. It keeps “snapshots” of every point in time in the project’s history, so you can never lose or overwrite it.
What’s next? Well I’ll publish another blog where I’ll tell you how I use GitHub for all of my Projects. I’ll also show you some demos of cool features of GitHub.
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