Live data from Hacker News

Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

areknawo.com

1–10 of 10 posts

Re: Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

#4
post #2

I consider https://learngitbranching.js.org/ to be nicer.

LearnGitBranching is excellent to help one visualize what's going on with rebases, resets, and merges. I highly recommend it as well.

Not sure it's aiming at quite the same target user as the OP article though, which is targeting the true beginner. LearnGitBranching is maybe slightly more advanced?

Re: Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

#5
If you are new to git, the very first thing you should do is get a GUI. There are plenty of good free ones. Github has one, or Sourcetree is another popular choice.

You should also learn the command line, too, but it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot if you don't know what you are doing, and a GUI makes it easier for beginners to get used to the whole paradigm first.

I have been using git for years now, and I use the CLI for lots of little one-off things, but I use the GUI for making individual commits and merges.

Re: Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

#7
Nice article, here's some feedback for you. The explanation for Branches could do with some re-wording. This sentence in particular is hard to digest: "Examples of these include -c, -m, -d, respectively standing for copy, move and delete with first two operating on first passed branch as the original one or (if only one has been passed) the one currently worked on."

I think the Checkouts example should be changed to:

  git checkout my-branch
This will continues from the previous example to show that you're checking out the branch you just created.

In the Push & Pull section, this doesn't make sense to me: "...in the form of git pull command, which automatically fetches and merges your current branch with the main remote one." Perhaps better worded as: "...in the form of git pull command, which automatically fetches the remote branch and merges with your current local branch.

Re: Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

#8

If you are new to git, the very first thing you should do is get a GUI. There are plenty of good free ones. Github has one, or Sourcetree is another popular choice. You should also learn the command line, too, but it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot if you don't know what you are doing, and a GUI makes it easier for beginners to get used to the whole paradigm first. I have been using git for years now, and…

However there are plenty of bad GUIs that make it easy to shoot yourself in the foot!

Sourcetree maybe isn't the worst but it's also one of the slowest.

Re: Git basics – the only introduction you'll ever need

#9
post #7

Nice article, here's some feedback for you. The explanation for Branches could do with some re-wording. This sentence in particular is hard to digest: "Examples of these include -c, -m, -d, respectively standing for copy, move and delete with first two operating on first passed branch as the original one or (if only one has been passed) the one currently worked on." I think the Checkouts example should be changed to:…

Thanks very much for the great feedback! I really appreciate it. This will certainly help me write better articles in the future. ;)