Version Control Will Save Your Day
Version Control or can also go by source control, is a very useful and important software tool. This tool allows teams to manage and make changes safely to their codebase. Teams can work smarter and more efficiently allowing for on the fly bug fixes, to introducing new features. This method of separating environments provides a safe workspace for a developer to work with and prevent the possibility of the app going down because of a new injection of code. Git is the most popular version control system with the popular platform, Github.
When coding on projects whether it be your own or someone else’s, it’s not wise to introduce every bit of change you make and commit to them fully. If a mistake were to be made on your part, the entire app could go down and you or your team would have to sift through possibly hundreds of folders and files to find the hidden bug. But with version control your possibility is lessened that a mistake like that would happen. The process would go like this: you pull the project onto your local machine, clone the repository and work on the project in your local environment safely. Cmd/Ctrl + Z will only go so far when you get into it.
Depending on your machine you might have to set up git. MacOs comes standard with linux and Git, if you’re a windows user you’ll most likely have to install the software but luckily for you it’s a very easy process with plenty of resources to follow. To check open your terminal and type “git — version” on Windows computer or “git -version” to see what version you have or if you need to install git. Once you have it installed, I’d highly recommend you practice git with every project you involve yourself with. Practice makes better and the commands to get started are fairly simple.
Bonus:
I’ve linked some resources I’ve used to get familiar with git and also how to make contributions to projects you might be interested in.
Pull Request
https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions
Installing Git
https://github.com/git-guides/install-git
FCC GitHub Introduction