GitHub is how people build software. With a community of more than 13 million, you can discover, use, and contribute to over 27 million projects with a powerful and social workflow.
It is easy to hype technology, but GitHub might be one of the most important tools for programmers since the free operating system Linux. It's no surprise that the technology behind GitHub, Git, was also written by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and also given to the world for free as open-source.
Programmers manage thousands of lines of code spanning hundreds of files that are being worked on by an entire team simultaneously.
We manage that chaos with a technology called "version control". Version control, like Git, provides programmers with the ability to work on isolated copies of code called "versions" or "branches", so that we don't step on each other's toes. We can weave these threads together seamlessly by merging "commits". You'll learn a bit about it, but trust us, it's just impossible to write software professionally without version control. Git and GitHub are by far the most popular version control system and if you're looking to develop software professionally, getting acquainted with this concept and workflow early is great.
GitHub is a social network built on Git that allows the entire world the ability to collaborate using git. We do this publicly with open-source projects like Linux and jQuery that basically power the entire internet. Companies manage and collaborate on code privately on GitHub as well, using the same powerful version control workflow provided by Git. Everyone manages code with Git and GitHub.
Having an active and meaningful GitHub profile filled with code is a great way to be taken seriously as a developer.
Learn uses GitHub in two important ways:
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GitHub is where every lesson on Learn is stored.
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Your code on Learn is synchronized with your GitHub account.
First, we treat curriculum on Learn just as developers treat code: every lesson is actually its own repository on GitHub. A repository is simply a digital directory where you can access all the files and versions tied to a specific project. In this case, a project would be a lesson.
You can interact with the curriculum and code on Learn the same way a real developer would work with a project on GitHub.
We also get to improve and manage the curriculum using the same workflows that power all the software in the world. Because we've open-sourced all of our curriculum, the whole world (that includes you!) can contribute to it, making it the best curriculum on the planet. Learn is like an interactive wikipedia for learning to code.
When you signed up for Learn, you connected your GitHub account. This connection allows us to push all the code you write as you go through Learn to GitHub automatically. That means as you Learn, you're actually building an active GitHub profile, allowing the world to see what you know and built.
The Learn and GitHub integration makes Learn unlike any other educational platform, allowing you to learn in the same workflow you will one day use as a professional programmer. If you use professional tools and learn in a real environment, you will master the entire craft of code.
View Git, Github And Learn on Learn.co and start learning to code for free.
View Git + Github + Learn on Learn.co and start learning to code for free.