What is
GitHub
GitHub is the go-to application for web developers, like a one-stop shop of utensils in your kitchen drawer—always there, and necessary for any type of meal you'd want to make. It's an online platform to store code and collaborate with team members; it also provides access control as well as several other tools for issue tracking, feature requests, task management and more. In essence: it brings coding projects alive!
Put simply, GitHub is a version control system that helps you keep track of your programming files (such as HTML or JavaScript). It allows users to share their code while simultaneously retaining control so they can limit certain areas accordingly. Picture our universe full of development projects represented by stars—each belonging to an individual developer or developer groups—but all existing within the same space. With GitHub these starry ideas all come together in perfect harmony; vast frontiers collaborating under one roof.
Though GitHub may seem intimidating at first glance, its underlying principles are best explained through basic concepts such as branching and merging – just think of streaming branches like veins connected to a heart taking lifeblood throughout the body! This "existence" feature gives you the ability to do some amazing things like processing multiple versions of documents simultaneously by creating separate outlets from a single source point—imagine reorganizing books on shelves without ever having to move everything around manually!
Examples of
GitHub
- Creating repositories for team projects
- Making commits to record changes to source code
- Working with pull requests and branches
- Using Issues feature for task management
- Automating deployment from GitHub repositories
- Exploring community builds of popular open-source libraries
- Reading the documentation on project controls and features
- Testing live functionality from within an integrated environment
- Securing access levels for users involved in various stages of development
- Sharing different aspects improvement ideas via GitHub's collaboration tools
Benefits of
GitHub
- Utilizing GitHub for version control makes it easier to collaborate on development projects; tracking commits from multiple members of a team helps identify errors and provides greater insight into debugging processes.
- Public repositories offer an easy way for developers to share snippets and code samples, making it possible for colleagues across the globe to access code regardless of time or location. This can lead to faster development cycles and better communication between teams.
- For larger scale projects, utilizing services like Continuous Integration (CI) via GitHub allows developers to integrate frequent changes in a program’s codebase without affecting its overall stability. Automated tests help ensure that any given commit is working properly with the most recent changes, ultimately leading to less manual effort in evaluating software updates throughout production processes.
Sweet facts & stats
- GitHub is the largest code host on the planet, with over 100 million repositories worldwide.
- Over 40 million developers around the world use GitHub for sharing and collaborating on projects.
- 67% of top-ranked software development teams rely on GitHub for better collaboration and communication between members.
- 13 out of 15 most popular programming languages are used in GitHub projects including JavaScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, C# and more.
- GitHub has issued a total of 144,390 pull requests every month in 2019 – that’s an unbelievable amount of coding!
- In just one week in October 2019 Github had 2 million active users who created 1 million new pull requests alone! Talk about productivity!
- Thousands of organizations have adopted Microsoft Teams +GitHub to help build better applications quicker than ever before—making web development a breeze!
- Even some astronomers have been spotted using Github to store their cosmological data simulations - looks like the stars have kicked up a storm!
The evolution of
GitHub
GitHub has become an essential tool for web developers ever since its launch back in 2008. According to statistics provided by Business Monitor International, the platform now supports an impressive 80 million developers worldwide who use it for collaborative development projects. But what's the story behind this success? Let's dive deeper into how GitHub evolved from a simple version control system to becoming an indispensable open source development hub.
GitHub initially began as a side project created by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett—three experienced programmers looking to find a better way of managing their shared codebase when removing bugs. They decided on Git, an existing version control system which was designed as a greatly streamlined alternative to SVN (another source revision program). The GitHub platform quickly spread throughout tech communities where they were soon taking advantage of its versatile approach towards hosting not only source codes but also wikis and issue tracking systems with embedded syntax highlighting support and diff tools that could compare different versions of one file easily—these features had previously never existed before!
From here, GitHub’s advancement really took off with several unique initiatives that allowed developers to showcase their projects publicly while creating attractive user interfaces within the service itself so users could more easily browse repositories without having any knowledge about underlying commands. Among these popular additions are ‘pull requests’—cards that let people discuss changes related to any open-source script; ‘gists’—blocks of text snippets published anonymously or under your username; and ‘projects’—web boards aimed at helping teams communicate better by visualizing tasks together on one page, so everyone can keep track of progress or follow through conversations seamlessly from start to completion.