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Welcome to Github

Welcome to GitHub
What is GitHub
Your GitHub Profile
The GitHub Repository?

Welcome to GitHub

This lesson will define GitHub.com, explain it, and review its essential features. Hopefully, by the end of the article, you will be as excited as we are about GitHub.

What is GitHub

GitHub.com is the epicenter of your software developer journey; you'll be interacting with GitHub so much that we cannot even list all the things you can do. Here are a few examples:

  • GitHub is where you save your code every night: Like a hard drive.
  • It's your professional portfolio: Like a resume.
  • It's the technology needed to collaborate with other developers.
  • Your GitHub profile is reviewed by recruiters when considering hiring you.
  • You can also meet other developers and cool projects or libraries: Similar to LinkedIn.

GitHub is LinkedIn + Google Drive but for developers.

Your GitHub Profile

This is 4Geeks Academy's main GitHub profile (Please click to follow us 🙂 on the top right of the page!).

Everyone has a profile located at: https://github.com/<your username>. For example: mine is github.com/alesanchezr (follow me 🙂!)

In this image, you will find the essential parts of your profile. GitHub Profile Explanation

Note: there are many ways to make your GitHub profile amazing.

The GitHub Repository?

GitHub's original purpose (before turning into a social network and many other things) was to be a website where developers could upload their code and access it at any time.

A repository is just a folder with code inside. For example, this repository contains all the code for the React.js library.

The typical GitHub Repository Page

Above, you can see an explanation of the typical GitHub Repository Page

Everything in GitHub revolves around code repositories:

  1. You can create new repositories for every project you start, and upload your code into those repos.
  2. Share the repo with everyone; people 👍🏼 like it, 📣 comment on it, open tickets about bug fixes, ask for new features, etc.
  3. Give access to other developers to edit your code inside your repository.
  4. Anyone can download your code, make changes and propose the changes for your approval.
  5. Many other fabulous things you will discover.

Liking and bookmarking a repository

The GitHub Star ⭐️ is the primary way to bookmark other people's repositories. It is a good idea to bookmark a repo because you will probably lose track of it; there are millions of amazing repos. You can categorize them.

We recommend you bookmark most of the academy repositories, as you will need and use them a lot. Here are a few of them:

Finding other people's code

Open Source has become one of the main drivers in today's world; GitHub has ways to find other people's exceptional repositories:

  • There is a search on the top navbar.
  • You can search for tags or technologies.
  • There is a feed of activity, and you can see what other devs you follow are doing.
  • Some people curate repos: Here's an awesome list of repos.
  • You can also see trending repos and recommendations in the feed.