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Ezekiel Kinyua
Ezekiel Kinyua

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My Data Science & Analytics Journey: Understanding Git, Git Bash & GitHub

#data #github #beginners

Introduction

Every journey starts with a single first step. My journey in Data Science and Analytics started a fortnight ago. Coming from a career in finance and investments which revolves around numbers and making sense of them, a good interpretation and presentation is key for the numbers to make sense. And this is how i ended up enrolling at LuxdevHq.

At first, the Git ecosystem sounded complicated, but surprisingly, it is not and it is quite interesting to learn and use.

What is Git?

Git is a software tool that allows me to make changes, manage and track projects or files that are locally hosted on my computer's hard drive.
Git tracks by keeping a record of previous versions of my projects. It acts like a camera that captures a moment. A record of this would help to determine changes happening in that moment.

What is Git Bash?

Think of Git Bash as a terminal where you can write commands to manage files or folders and projects. You can also use Git Bash to write commands that communicates with GitHub.

What is GitHub?

GitHub is simply an online storage for your projects and files that allows you to access them remotely away from your PC. It also allows for sharing of the projects and files, and to also collaborate with other users of the same projects or files.

Further Definitions
  1. Repository - Also know as a Repo This refers to a project being tracked and managed by Git Bash.
  2. Push - This refers to sending or uploading a file or project from a local machine to an online hosting such as GitHub.
  3. Cloning - This refers to downloading a git from the online hosting into my local machine.
  4. Branch - A branch allows you to work on a new project without altering the original version.
Setting up the Git ecosystem on my PC
  1. Installing Git

I downloaded from git-scm.com and installed. This was the first step to installing Git Bash. To check that it worked, i ran the command

git --version
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  1. Git Configuration

This involved setting my name by running the command

git config --global user.name "My name"
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To configure my email,

git config --global user.email "My email"
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  1. Setting up SSH Keys

This facilitates securely connecting my PC to GitHub. GitHub needs to securely connect to my PC.

  1. Creating a repository on my PC

This involves creating files and folders on my computer. A repo is simply a project or folder that is being tracked by Git.

  1. Connecting to GitHub

After securely storing the projects on my PC, the next step is to Push them online so that they are shareable and accessible remotely.

Conclusion

This has been my last two weeks, in a nutshell.
What i have learnt so far is that it is a journey of that requires me to commit. As much as it is about learning and understanding new tools, it is more about how i will interpret and approach problems. The errors, the commands and every success are all part of this learning journey.

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