If you are learning programming today, there’s a tool you will be told to install almost immediately: Git.
You will often hear things like:
- “Push your code to GitHub.”
- “Create a branch.”
- “Open a pull request.”
Most beginners follow the steps without asking a deeper/curious question.
Why do developers even need Git and GitHub in the first place?
The interesting part is that software development existed long before these tools. And if you talk to developers who worked before modern version control, you will hear stories that sound almost unbelievable today.
To understand why Git and GitHub matter so much, we have to go back to a time when collaboration was messy, fragile, and sometimes chaotic.
A Conversation That Made Me Think
One afternoon I was helping a few interns understand how to contribute to a project. One of them asked:
“So GitHub is basically where developers store their code, right?”
It was not wrong, but also it was not the full story.
Instead of explaining commits and branches immediately, I asked them something different.
“What do you think developers did before Git existed?”
Nobody answered.
Because most people entering tech today assume Git has always been part of programming.
But that's not the case.
When Code Was Just Files in a Folder
Before version control systems, developers managed code the simplest way possible.
Yes "simplest way possible"...they copied files.
A lot.
A project folder might look like this in those days:
website/
index.html
index_new.html
index_new_mike.html
index_new_mike_final.html
index_new_mike_final_REAL.html
If this looks funny, it’s because it is.
But this was normal.
In fact, this behavior still happens today in places where version control is not properly adopted. You will see folders filled with files named things like:
report_final.doc
report_final_v2.doc
report_final_v2_real.doc
report_final_v2_real_FINAL.doc
This was version control but done manually.
Collaboration Was Even Harder
Now imagine three developers working on the same project.
One developer finishes a feature and sends an email:
“Hi team, attached is the latest version.”
Another developer downloads it, edits the file, and sends another email:
“Please use this updated version instead.”
Meanwhile a third developer is still working on an older copy(version).
Now someone has to combine those changes manually.
Sometimes work gets overwritten. Sometimes bugs appear and nobody knows why.
The most common question in the room becomes:
“Who changed this?”
And often the answer is silence.
Early Tools Tried to Fix the Problem
Eventually developers realized they needed better ways to track changes. This led to early version control systems like
CVS and Apache Subversion.
These tools introduced important ideas:
- tracking file history
- seeing who made changes
- restoring older versions of code
For many teams, this was a huge improvement, but these systems still had a limitation.
They depended on a single central server. What these meant was, if that server went down, development stopped.If the repository got corrupted, the team could lose everything.
The Linux Problem That Changed Everything
In the early 2000s, the developers working on the Linux kernel had a unique challenge.Thousands of developers from around the world were contributing code.
Managing those contributions became extremely complicated.
So in 2005, Linus Torvalds built a new system called
Git.
Git introduced a powerful idea.
Instead of one central server holding the project history, every developer would have a complete copy of it.
That meant:
- developers could work offline
- every clone became a backup
- branches could be created instantly
- teams could merge changes safely
In simple terms, Git made collaboration faster and safer.
Some of the funny initial commits:
April 8, 2005
Initial revision of "git", the information manager from hell
https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290
The README in that commit also jokingly explains what “git” means:
- “stupid content tracker”
- “random three-letter combination”
- “goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t” (when it breaks)
more on version control: https://pslmodels.github.io/Git-Tutorial/content/background/VCgitHistory.html
Then GitHub Changed the Culture of Development
Git solved version control, but developers still needed a place online to collaborate.
That’s where GitHub came in.
When GitHub launched in 2008, it did something powerful.
It made software development open and collaborative.
Developers could now:
- share projects publicly
- contribute to open source
- review each other’s code
- discuss improvements before merging changes
Instead of emailing code around or using a flash disk, developers could open a pull request.
Another developer could review the code, leave comments, and approve it before it became part of the project.
It transformed coding into a global collaboration.
The Git vs GitHub Confusion
This is where many beginners get confused.
Git and GitHub are not the same thing.
A simple way to think about it is this:
- Git is the tool that tracks changes in code.
- GitHub is a platform that hosts Git repositories and helps developers collaborate.
You can use Git without GitHub locally.
And many companies run private Git servers internally.
GitHub simply made collaboration easier and more accessible to everyone.
The Global Developer Community
Once GitHub became popular, something interesting happened.
Developers from completely different parts of the world began collaborating on the same projects.
A student in Brazil could contribute to a project started in Germany.
An engineer in India could fix a bug discovered in Canada.
And here in Kenya, many developers first learned collaboration by contributing to projects on GitHub.
I’ve personally seen interns and colleagues go from writing their first lines of code to submitting pull requests to open-source projects used around the world.
For many developers in emerging tech ecosystems, GitHub became more than a tool.
It became a portfolio, a learning platform, and sometimes even a gateway to global opportunities.
Git Platforms Today
Today GitHub is not the only platform hosting Git repositories.
Other platforms include:
Each offers tools for managing repositories and development workflows.
But the core engine behind them all is still Git.
Why Git Quietly Changed Software Forever
Today Git feels normal.
Students learn it early.
Bootcamps teach it in the first week.
But Git quietly enabled something much bigger.
It made global collaboration possible.
A developer in Nairobi can work on the same project as someone in San Francisco.
A student can fix a bug in software used by millions of people.
Entire companies now run distributed teams across continents.
Without Git, this level of collaboration would be incredibly difficult.
The Real Lesson
The real story of Git and GitHub isn’t just about version control.
It’s about how the right tools can change the way people work together.
Before Git, developers spent a lot of time managing files and fixing mistakes.
After Git, they could focus on building things.
And if you ever see a folder named “final_v3_REAL_FINAL”, you’re probably looking at a small reminder of what software development looked like before Git.
EXTRAS:
GAMES TO PLAY
Learn Git Branching
An interactive Git visualization tool to educate and challenge!
EXERCISE & LEARN
Git Exercises
Well organized and easy to understand Web building tutorials with lots of examples of how to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, Python, PHP, Bootstrap, Java, XML and more.
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