Understanding Github....

Understanding Github

For way too long, I've not understood GitHub, so I though if I  don't understand it others my struggle too! So what would your first day on GitHub look like?

What's needed is  a really good simple introduction, just to explain the obvious that you need to know.  

Before I forget the GitHub .md files are markdown! That's confused me for a long time!!

What you might not know is that there are plenty of reasons to use GitHub if you’re not a programmer. According to GitHub’s educational videos, any knowledge worker can benefit, with “knowledge worker” defined as most any profession that makes use of a computer.

If you’ve given up on understanding how to use GitHub, this article is for you.

One of the main misconceptions about GitHub is that it’s a development tool, as much a part of coding as computer languages and compilers. However, GitHub itself isn’t much more than a social network like Facebook or Flickr. 

You build a profile, upload projects to share and connect with other users by “following” their accounts. And while many users store programs and code projects, there’s nothing preventing you from keeping text documents or other file types in your project folders to show off, for instance policy documents, playbooks and other text based collaboration. There's a place to store your quick thoughts to, these are known as gists. Every gist is a Git repository, which means that it can be forked and cloned. If you are signed in to GitHub when you create a gist, the gist will be associated with your account and you will see it in your list of gists when you navigate to your gist home page.

Gists can be public or secret. Public gists show up in Discover, where people can browse new gists as they're created. They're also searchable, so you can use them if you'd like other people to find and see your work. After creating a gist, you cannot convert it from public to secret.

First, you’ll need to sign up for an account on GitHub.com. It’s as simple as signing up for any other social network. Keep the email you picked handy; we’ll be referencing it again soon.

You could stop there and GitHub would work fine. But if you want to work on your project on your local computer, you need to have Git installed. In fact, GitHub won’t work on your local computer if you don’t install Git. Install Git for Windows, Mac or Linux as needed.

Stay up to date with the GitHub blog....

Don't forget the GitHub Guides.

There's the GitHub Workflow to understand how the process glues together. 

Learn more about coding and development with the GitHub Learning labs. These will help you learn and exploit GitHub. 

There's the GitHub document repository as you need to know and explore more. 

There are some good student resources relating to GitKraken (A developer environment interface). Once you get your head into GitHub, maybe start with a text document and build your confidence in coding and using it in anger. 

References:

https://readwrite.com/2013/09/30/understanding-github-a-journey-for-beginners-part-1/

https://desktop.github.com/

https://github.blog/2018-04-19-introducing-github-learning-lab/

https://lab.github.com/githubtraining/first-day-on-github

https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/

https://guides.github.com

https://docs.github.com/en

https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/

https://www.gitkraken.com/student-resources

https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/

https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/writing-on-github

https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/writing-on-github/creating-gists