Git & GitHub · Quick Reference

Lesson 1 — Introduction to Git & Version Control Cheat Sheet

Git & GitHub

In one line: Picture this: you're working on a report. You save it as report.docx. A few hours later you make major edits — now it's report_final.docx. Then you rethink everything — report_F...

Key Ideas

1The Problem Version Control Solves. Picture this: you're working on a report. You save it as report.docx. A few hours later you make major edits — now it's report_final.docx. Then you rethink everything ...

2What is Git?. Git is a distributed version control system — the most widely used version control tool in the world. Created by Linus Torvalds in 2005, Git lets you track every chang...

3The Origin Story: Git Born in 2 Weeks. The Linux kernel project — one of the largest open-source projects in the world — used a proprietary version control system called BitKeeper. In 2005, the free license...

4Git vs GitHub vs GitLab vs Bitbucket. This is the most common confusion for beginners. These are NOT the same thing — they're related but distinct tools.

5The 3 States of Git. This is the most important concept to understand about how Git works. Every file in a Git project exists in one of three states: