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Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

try.github.com

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Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#31

Post by flatline3 »

juriga wrote: post #15

This tutorial is very pretty and does a great job of emulating the local Git experience using just a single interactive webpage. However, Github seems to be trying to introduce Git to a wider audience - namely non-developers. From the blog post[1]: "If you know of a developer, designer, or other knowledge worker that would benefit from using Git but that hasn't made the leap just yet, send them over to try.github.com…

I have fairly extensive experience working with designers, and git is simply too complicated. The additional features offer them very little value, and the value they do offer is far outweighed by the complexity of the system and the propensity for difficult to resolve failure.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#32

Post by arms »

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

The tutorial definitely glosses over some information that you would need to research later on.

For a more in-depth guide, check out the Pro Git book @ http://git-scm.com/book. You can read it online for free.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#33

Post by Stratego »

duopixel wrote: post #26

I really appreciate the new learning tools to become more adept at programming and the command line. However, I often find myself mindlessly re-typing the commands being thrown at me without really understanding what's going on, or why I'm being asked to do it. I liked the approach of Ruby Monks where they give you a task and let you guess the syntax. If you got stuck you then look at the solution. I don't mean to ma…

This is a great point. But before you can make people work at understanding something, you have to make them realize that they have a stake in trying to learn.

I don't think everyone (and certainly not myself) was able to understand the value of Git at first glance and decide to invest time and effort into learning about its inner workings.

Normal Code School courses and Ruby Monk challenges are made for people who already have somewhat of a vested interested in learning. Something that pushes them to challenge themselves beyond a simple demo/interactive tutorial. People like that are (sadly) a limited subset, we're trying to broaden that.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#34

Post by phillijw »

arms wrote: post #32
dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

The tutorial definitely glosses over some information that you would need to research later on. For a more in-depth guide, check out the Pro Git book @ http://git-scm.com/book . You can read it online for free.

I see people recommending pro git but it barely covers anything useful.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#35

Post by to3m »

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

The Pro Git book is relatively good. Ignore Chapter 1.

http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#36

Post by lubos »

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

the best way to learn Git is simply to be forced to use it. and even then you only learn subset you actually need to get the job done but at least it's something to get you started.

I'm not going to post link to yet another git tutorial. I would rather recommend to start with something like Heroku, Appharbor or similar.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#37

Post by chmike »

pardner wrote: post #19

Nice tutorial. However, it requires giving an app 'try-git' access to your private and public repositories... so afterwards, probably a good idea to edit your profile, click Applications, then remove the try_git app.

I stoped when it asked to create a repo on github. This is not required to lean git. Well tried ;)

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#38

Post by juriga »

Stratego wrote: post #27
juriga wrote: post #15

This tutorial is very pretty and does a great job of emulating the local Git experience using just a single interactive webpage. However, Github seems to be trying to introduce Git to a wider audience - namely non-developers. From the blog post[1]: "If you know of a developer, designer, or other knowledge worker that would benefit from using Git but that hasn't made the leap just yet, send them over to try.github.com…

It's hard to know how well it works for non-developers until we've had hundreds of non-developers going through the course. Which should hopefully be happening now. I can't speak for GitHub (I'm from the Code School team that built this), but we were very cautious not to introduce too many concepts in that course (you can see below someone saying it's too basic, yes, that's the point), simply the absolute basics we t…

Hi Olivier, great to know you're actively improving the tutorial!

Now that I checked the tutorial again, there seems to be a "Press enter to submit commands" help text before the command prompt. If you just added that, great, since that would have been my first suggestion anyway :)

As a developer using Git daily I can only guess what the most problematic parts of this tutorial are for beginners. I hope you get a lot of good feedback and data from all the people visiting the site!

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#39

Post by to3m »

flatline3 wrote: post #31
juriga wrote: post #15

This tutorial is very pretty and does a great job of emulating the local Git experience using just a single interactive webpage. However, Github seems to be trying to introduce Git to a wider audience - namely non-developers. From the blog post[1]: "If you know of a developer, designer, or other knowledge worker that would benefit from using Git but that hasn't made the leap just yet, send them over to try.github.com…

I have fairly extensive experience working with designers, and git is simply too complicated. The additional features offer them very little value, and the value they do offer is far outweighed by the complexity of the system and the propensity for difficult to resolve failure.

I rather agree. It seems difficult enough to teach people Alien Brain, SVN and Perforce, and they all have a much simpler model.

And is git much use to people who mainly work with large binary files? Well, I'm not sure (translation: "no") - but perhaps if they don't expect very much from their source control system, they won't be disappointed when git fails to deliver on its promises as well as it does for text.

Re: Got 15 minutes and want to learn Git?

#40

Post by spacemanaki »

dpcan wrote: post #30

NOTE: This is not a rant, I'm just trying to give you a peek into my mind as I tried out this tutorial. I'm doing my best to describe my confusion. I have no clue how to use Git, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while. Unfortunately, this is yet another tutorial that is very frustrating even though it's designed to target noobs like myself. So, I added octocat.txt to my staging area. Success! ...…

> Maybe that's the problem, Git isn't something you can just pick up quickly

It is the problem, I think. Git isn't easy to use. It's a powerful tool designed by a very smart person (Linus) to manage a very complex project (the kernel). It's not a toy, and it's not designed for beginners. On top of that, the interface actually isn't that well designed, and is a pretty leaky abstraction layer that in many cases requires you to have some understanding of its internals [1]. But we're programmers, our work isn't always easy and the benefits of using Git or using any distributed version control system outweigh the alternatives (note that I'm not talking about Git vs Mercurial vs Darcs but rather about the previous generation of supposedly easier tools like SVN and CVS). So I really think it's worth struggling to master it and treat it like a first-class tool, that you're going to invest in because it's important, rather than try to find an easy way out.

I'm projecting on to you a little bit, and I apologize for that, but every time a Git tutorial hits the front page of HN, there are people expressing frustration or complaining that Git is too hard or too complex. Yeah, it's not perfect, but honestly, it's a damned good tool, and I think it's absolutely worth investing in. Most things worth learning are hard, and while that's not an excuse for poor tutorials (no comment on this one as I haven't tried it), I don't think programmers who take their profession seriously have much to excuse what seems like our almost constant desire for things to be easy.

Maybe the next generation of version control will be easier to use and have a more beautiful user interface, but Git is here now and there's an ecosystem around it supported by the network effects of its popularity, and I think that does end up outweighing the difficulty.

[1] That said, I think the inner core of its internals, ie representing revision history as a DAG of commits, is actually relatively simple, despite the poor interface. See this for what I think is one of the best intros to Git: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf

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