What the heck is SSH

Imagine there's a secure, private tunnel that only you have the access code to, to open the door. This is like SSH. You use this secure, private tunnel to push up code or pull down code/files, etc from you computer to the github servers.

What is SSH? SSH Stands for Secure Shell. The first S (Secure) and the following SH (Shell), so yes, they use the first letter of the first word (Secure) and the first two letters of the second word (Shell) for the acronym.

1. First you generate your ssh key pair on your computer. One key is public and the other is private. You share the public key with GitHub and you keep the private key secret and safe on your computer.

2. You add your public key to your GitHub account. So when GitHub receives a connection request, if it matches the private key, it will have access. If it doesn't match, then no access.

3. The SSH client uses the private key to create a secure and encrypted connection over the internet. If you try accessing GitHub to push code, pull changes, etc it will check the connection request by trying to unlock it with your public key.

4. Everything we send goes through this secure, private tunnel.

This allows your work to remain confidential and safe.