How to teach Git
rachelcarmena.github.io
How to teach Git
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Re: How to teach Git
#2Having taught git several times within a data science course I find two concepts especially worth extra time: WHY there is a staging area, and what is the difference between “git” and “github”.
Re: How to teach Git
#3An honest criticism:
If I had trouble with understanding the reason behind add->commit->push workflow, I would definitely have no idea what this article talks about when it says things like "merge, rebase, diamond shape". The flow chart looks almost exactly the same for "pull" and "pull --rebase". The only difference between the charts is the wording which has no meaning at all for a newbie.
Re: How to teach Git
#4Having taught git several times within a data science course I find two concepts especially worth extra time: WHY there is a staging area, and what is the difference between “git” and “github”.
> WHY there is a staging area
I understand your second point, but I have a hard time understanding the difficulty with this part. Why is it hard for people to understand the idea of staging?
You put things in a box one at a time before closing the box. Does it require more explanation than that? What do people find difficult about it?
Re: How to teach Git
#5Personally, I think using git from the commandline is too complicated for the purpose it serves in most companies.
Using a git GUI works quite well for people inexperienced with git.
Re: How to teach Git
#6Personally, I think using git from the commandline is too complicated for the purpose it serves in most companies. Using a git GUI works quite well for people inexperienced with git.
Its opposite for me. I am very comfortable with the command line. It lets me do crazy things and if I mess up, quitely crawl back to the peaceful place.
GUI integrations have some advantages but the knowledge is not transferrable. Different GUIs work differently but the commands stay the same. I think both can complement each other. I use Pycharm a lot and it is a lot easier to see diffs or file history there. I think the same can be done with cmd as well but I don’t think I ever bothered to learn advanced commands.
Re: How to teach Git
#7Having taught git several times within a data science course I find two concepts especially worth extra time: WHY there is a staging area, and what is the difference between “git” and “github”.
> WHY there is a staging area I understand your second point, but I have a hard time understanding the difficulty with this part. Why is it hard for people to understand the idea of staging? You put things in a box one at a time before closing the box. Does it require more explanation than that? What do people find difficult about it?
Isn't the staging area closer to an intermediary box? That's where it can get confusing.
Re: How to teach Git
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WHY there is a staging area I understand your second point, but I have a hard time understanding the difficulty with this part. Why is it hard for people to understand the idea of staging? You put things in a box one at a time before closing the box. Does it require more explanation than that? What do people find difficult about it?
Isn't the staging area closer to an intermediary box? That's where it can get confusing.
Staging puts things in the box, commit closes the box, puts it on the pile with the other boxes, and gives you a new empty staging box.
Re: How to teach Git
#9Having taught git several times within a data science course I find two concepts especially worth extra time: WHY there is a staging area, and what is the difference between “git” and “github”.
> WHY there is a staging area I understand your second point, but I have a hard time understanding the difficulty with this part. Why is it hard for people to understand the idea of staging? You put things in a box one at a time before closing the box. Does it require more explanation than that? What do people find difficult about it?
For simple projects (like ppl experimenting with git) you will always want to save all changes. So why stage first ?
Re: How to teach Git
#10Having taught git several times within a data science course I find two concepts especially worth extra time: WHY there is a staging area, and what is the difference between “git” and “github”.
> WHY there is a staging area I understand your second point, but I have a hard time understanding the difficulty with this part. Why is it hard for people to understand the idea of staging? You put things in a box one at a time before closing the box. Does it require more explanation than that? What do people find difficult about it?
Understanding the staging area first requires understanding the need for it: The need for atomic commits. The need to create commits that have specific changes in them and are not always a snapshot of the entire world below the git root exactly as is right now.