Git Explained by DEV Community

There are many Git tutorials that explain how it works, what it is, the commands, the best practices … and so on, so instead of doing a new Git tutorial, I’m putting in the ones I’d recommend to my peers using Dev Community articles. 😄

It is important to mention that these are not all, there are many more, but among those that I had the opportunity to read and found interesting, I added them to the list.

The intention of this article is not to make you an advanced user of Git, but rather it is focused on beginners. 😅

Let’s start with almost the most common question to answer: Why you should learn Git? You can found the answer here Why you should learn Git by @imichaelowolabi, the article has great insights and also more resources to expand your knowledge.

Concepts First

I’ve been a developer for a while, and the most common problem I noticed is the lack of Git concepts. In my opinion, concepts should be the first thing you should learn and then put them into practice, many tutorials focus on commands and ignore the basics. To fix that lack of concepts, this article is the solution Git Concepts by @unseenwizzard, it is really interesting, several important points are explained with various examples, it is really good. 👏 If you want to go deeper, check this article Git internal Architecture by @anuj_bansal_, it explains the Git magic under the hood.

If it’s easier for you to get information using a video, I think this will do the job, Git for Absolute Beginners (Video) by @cheukting_ho, it includes slides and examples too!

What’s next?

Now is the time to configure some basic settings, just a few to get the job done, you can check Basic Git configuration by @lobo_tuerto, minimal setup to get the job done and a short list of aliases, useful in some cases. 😉

Showtime

Once you learned all the concept, it’s time to put them into practice, here a brief set of articles to practices.

• Git Explained (5+ Part Series) by @milu_franz, include a mix of concepts, images and very good examples.
• Sometimes it’s better to have a visual help to understand some git commands, this article meets this requirement CS Visualized: Useful Git Commands by @lydiahallie.

Some Git workflows include advanced Git features like working with tags and submodules, you can checkout these articles Git Tagging Tutorial by @rrampage and Git Submodules Revisited by @dwd.

Further reading

When in doubt on any topic, it is always best to consult the official documentation Git Official Documentation. And finally some interesting links to keep in mind:

• Learning Git, short exercises to learn and practice git commands, with a graphical environment for easy learning.
• Git Cheatsheet, basically a list of git commands explained briefly.

Articles

• Why you should learn Git
• Git Concepts
• Git Explained: Series
• Git for Absolute Beginners (Video)
• Basic Git Configuration
• Git Tagging Tutorial
• Git Submodules Revisited
• Git Internal Architecture
• CS Visualized: Useful Git Commands
• Git Official Documentation
• Learning Git
• Git Cheatsheet