Git and GitHub, the parts you use
After this lesson you can: Put code on GitHub so your work is visible and recoverable.
Watch
- Git & GitHub Crash Course for Beginners [2026] - freeCodeCamp.org, 81 min. Current beginner crash course explicitly covers both Git and GitHub in a walkthrough-length format.
- Git and GitHub for Beginners - Crash Course - freeCodeCamp.org, 69 min. Popular beginner-focused GitHub crash course fits engineers needing practical repository workflow from zero.
- Git Tutorial for Beginners: Learn Git in 1 Hour - Programming with Mosh, 69 min. Solid Git fundamentals; most working engineers can skim this, so it is kept as optional ground.
Notes
Git is the tool that tracks changes in your code over time. GitHub is the hosted place where those tracked changes can live outside your laptop, be shared with others, and be recovered if your machine disappears. For this lesson, the goal is not to become a Git expert; it is to get comfortable creating a repository, saving meaningful commits, and pushing code to GitHub so your work has a durable public or private home.
A useful mental model is that your working folder is your desk, Git is the notebook that records important snapshots, and GitHub is the off-site copy of that notebook. You edit files, choose what changes belong together, commit them with a message, then push those commits to GitHub. Later, you can clone the repository onto another machine, inspect history, compare changes, or roll back when you break something.
The misconception is that GitHub is for later, after you have polished projects or become more advanced. That is backwards. An empty GitHub after years of engineering means your learning, experiments, and small tools are invisible and fragile. GitHub is not only a portfolio; it is basic engineering hygiene, like backups, reproducibility, and leaving a trail for your future self.
After this lesson, you should be able to create a repository, connect a local project to it, commit changes, push them to GitHub, and verify the code is visible online. You should also understand the everyday words: repository, commit, branch, remote, clone, pull, and push well enough to use them without fear.