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What is Git and Why is it an Essential Tool?

  • 5 min
  • Beginner

Welcome to the Git Course! The absolute standard in the industry for source code version control.

Regardless of the programming language you use, Git is one of the most important tools you will learn as a developer.

In fact, if you are even a little bit into the field, you’ve probably encountered it. If you’ve ever struggled to understand the concept or gotten tangled up using it, don’t worry, it’s happened to all of us.

Precisely in this course, we are going to lose our fear of it and learn to use it as a useful tool in your daily life (not just for code, it’s good for many things).

But first, let’s start at the beginning: What is Git? 👇

What is Git?

Git is a distributed version control system designed to manage changes in a project’s source code.

You’re probably still wondering, what on earth do you need that for? Well, when you program, you will surely save (Ctrl + S) many times, many files.

Since we are all human, one day you will mess up. You realize that after 37 changes to your files, something that used to work now doesn’t (oh crap!) 🤔.

But imagine that every time you change a file, a snapshot of your entire project is saved. So that later, at any time, you could look back at any previous state of any file.

That is exactly Git. Seems useful, doesn’t it?

curso-git

¿‘Save as’? Where we’re going we don’t need ‘Save As’

Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005, the same creator of the Linux kernel, to solve frequent problems in software development.

  • Revert changes to previous versions.
  • Collaborate in a team without overwriting others’ work.
  • Experiment with new features in separate branches without affecting the main code.

Other Version Control Systems

Source code control is not the only type of version management software that exists. The need to control changes is everywhere, not just in programming.

  • Document Management: For documents, libraries, legal offices, etc., solutions like SharePoint or even Word’s “track changes” are generally used.
  • In Video Games: Tools like Perforce or Plastic SCM are often used, which handle large files better (textures, 3D models).
  • In Industry: Mechanical engineers use PDM (Product Data Management) systems to manage blueprints and CAD models.

Even within the world of code, Git wasn’t always the leader. Before, we used SVN (Subversion) or CVS, and there were modern alternatives like Mercurial.

But the reality is that Git has eaten the market. Nowadays, except for very specific niches, if you are going to develop software, you are going to use Git. It is the undisputed standard.

Git is Not Just for Code

Once you get used to the security Git provides, you want to use it for everything. In fact, you’ll feel “weird” working on something in a folder without Git’s protection.

To give you an idea, all the content on this website (not just code, the text of the articles) I manage with Git.

Since what Git actually does is track lines of text, it’s fantastic for:

  • Writing documentation or notes (in Markdown).
  • Writing theses or books (in LaTeX).
  • Saving configuration files for your 3D printer or Home Assistant.
  • Managing your own website or blog (like I do).

Basically, anything that is plain text is suitable to be managed with Git.

Be Careful with Binary Files!

Git is wonderful with text, but it gets along terribly with binaries (images, PDFs, ZIPs, .exe files, Word documents…).

Why? Because Git can’t read “which line changed” inside a photo. So, every time you modify an image, Git saves a whole new copy.

If you overuse this, the size of your repository will grow uncontrollably and become slow.

For code and text: Git. For vacation photos: OneDrive.

Git is NOT GitHub

This is one of the most common questions and causes a lot of confusion at the beginning. You’ll often hear the names used almost interchangeably, but in reality they are different things.

  • Git is the tool, the software you install on your computer to manage versions. It’s the engine and it’s local.
  • GitHub is one of many web services (owned by Microsoft) that hosts Git projects in the cloud.

You can use Git on your computer for free, with no need for the internet, no need to register anywhere, and without depending on anyone.

GitHub and its alternatives like GitLab or Bitbucket, are commercial services where we can upload our work to share it with the world (internally, they use Git).

In the next article, we’ll roll up our sleeves: we are going to install Git and start looking at the basic concepts to create our first repository.

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