Confessions of a Git-diot

I know, I know, all the cool kids are using it. But hey I know these other things so I am good.

Git originally came along in 2005. As it began to pick up steam developers talked about it being different.

By the time I began to hear about it, I was ten years into my technical career. I had already learned VisualSourceSafe , CVS , and Subversion .

“Another freaking source control to learn!” I exclaimed.

I enjoyed learning a new language. Source control seemed so mundane.

Struggle with Git

To say I struggled with Git is an understatement. I actively fought learning it for a while.

As a consultant for years, we used what the client chose. Many times they had older source control systems.

Occasionally, I would work with Git or Github . I would grit my teeth and get through it.

Fumbling along

When this happened I would work slowly. I made many mistakes and was irritated.

Then I came to a realization. I have learned new languages and technology, so why not this?

Learning Git

I decided to stop fighting them. I began learning Git. At first, I started with some basics. Primarily command line stuff. Although I am not really a command-line person. (More on that later.)

Then I found this website . It walks you through some things online. I found it quite helpful and educational. It uses some visuals that reveal what is happening behind the scenes.

Command Line

I have had a love-hate relationship with command lines forever. Mostly hate. They frustrate me to no end. Lucky for me most of my career I have been able to learn enough.

There is a simplicity to the command line. It makes me think back to my days with our Atari 400. I wrote many math assignments on that. Learning BASIC and other commands.

GitHub Desktop

For visual people like me, the GitHub Desktop is quite helpful. It allows us to interact with Git graphically. This makes more sense to me.

It allows me to change branches and create pull requests quickly. When I need to compare versions the diff tools come in handy.

There are other tools like this. SourceTree is from Atlassian and works in a similar fashion. You can visually review code in a Git or BitBucket repository.

Mistakes

Along with my resentment, I made many mistakes with Git. Much of this stemmed from not learning the basics first.

Master issues

Coming from Subversion I confused some of the terminology. I thought I knew what push and pull meant. Then I started to put code in the wrong branches.

This was particularly troublesome. I didn’t realize it until we were ready to do a production rollout. Yikes, I was in some hot water for that!

Deleting account

If you look at my current GitHub account you will see only some recent work. As someone who has been developing for a while, you would think I would have more.

For instance, a few years ago I taught a Java course for DMACC . I had all of our code examples in my GitHub account. Then for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to delete my account.

Wow! Was that a dumb idea? Why yes it was. I have tried to get some of the examples back. Gone like the wind. So learn from my stupidity. Don’t do that.

In conclusion, Git is the repository of choice. Don’t be foolish like me and fit in. To paraphrase an old song, I fought Git and Git won.

Jump in and make a few mistakes. You will learn from it. Plus you will have a record of your changes. Repo for the win??

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