DEV Community

Discussion on: Just starting out with Git and GitHub? It gets easier, honest!

Collapse
 
walker profile image
Walker Harrison

Thanks for the write-up, Scott. Even as I've dipped my toe into coding in the last year, I've avoided Git for some reason. I actually signed up for a MOOC though that I never actually started...you think it's worth studying formally or will I just pick it up by using it?

Collapse
 
erebos-manannan profile image
Erebos Manannán

I would recommend you try out sensible version control systems written by people who are not primarily kernel developers, such as Mercurial (and BitBucket for hosting).

You'll likely have less trouble understanding what's going on, and you don't need to learn all these magical command line commands and gotchas, as it's built from ground up with the users in mind.

Similarly fully open source, and free hosting, just more sensible, easier to understand, easier to extend, etc., and additionally there's better GUI tools (e.g. TortoiseHG) for managing your repository that really help understand what's going on.

mercurial-scm.org/
bitbucket.org/product
tortoisehg.bitbucket.io/

After you get comfortable with Mercurial, understanding the mess that is Git will be a bit easier, and you'll know to stay away from it whenever possible.

Collapse
 
spences10 profile image
Scott Spence

Hey Walker, thanks for the reply! I was utterly confused with Git in the beginning, I think you just have to start using it I use it daily now with my limited knowledge.