What is GitHub?

1. What is GitHub?

Hi, my name is Jasmin, and I'll be your instructor.

2. Course overview

We'll be learning about GitHub, how to use it for projects and version control, and everyday tasks on the platform, including how to generate personal access tokens.

3. Chapter overview

First, we'll review what GitHub is. We'll learn about the benefits of using the platform for different projects and see how GitHub differs from Git.

4. GitHub

GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service for users to upload and track their work. Usually, this work is code-based. This tracking is often referred to as version control. Cloud-based means that GitHub provides on-demand resources to its users over the internet, or the cloud. For example, it offers storage space, so we don't have to keep large files on our computers. Many platforms offer a similar service, such as GitLab and BitBucket, but GitHub is the most popular.

5. GitHub uses

The primary uses for GitHub are storing and keeping track of projects and files and collaborating with others. It also acts like a social network, allowing us to connect with other users. There are also several open-source projects (projects that are open to the public) that anyone can learn from, practice with, or edit.

6. GitHub vs. Git

Before we go any further, let's distinguish how GitHub differs from Git. Git is a version control software and can be used independently from GitHub or another hosting platform. GitHub is a platform that enhances Git to make it easier to manage projects and collaborate. It is entirely dependent on Git. We cannot use GitHub without Git!

7. Collaborating on GitHub

Now, we'll dig into how it can make collaboration easier. Recall the version control workflow. Version control is the concept of tracking a file through its different states and allowing several people to work on the same file. This workflow can all happen on GitHub rather than using Git on a Command Line Interface. Since GitHub stores a project in the cloud, anyone can access it, making collaboration super easy. GitHub also benefits solo projects or projects we do independently without collaborating with others, as it provides a complete history of every project stage.

8. GitHub repo

A project usually has many files, and when working with Git, there is a dot-git file that stores the history of a file. Together, these create a repository or repo. GitHub is built on top of Git, hence the name. The GitHub repo will contain all the files related to a particular project and a record of past versions of the files. Since this GitHub repo is stored on the internet, it is also known as a remote repo. This is because Git defines a local repo as saved on our local computer and a remote repo as saved on the internet, or cloud.

9. GitHub website

We've spoken a lot about Github; let's now see what it looks like. Here is an example of a profile overview. We can navigate to our Repositories by clicking

10. GitHub website

here. We may see a tab called Projects. This is a GitHub spreadsheet feature to manage the activity on our repos. We won't be looking at it in this course.

11. Let's practice!

Time to practice our understanding of GitHub. Following that, we'll look at how to set up repos.