Discovering Difference Between Git and GitHub

Programming is widely known and accepted as one of the best possible career paths, both when it comes to the salary and the actual stability of the job. Given that, it’s actually one of the most popular career choices when it comes to the field of IT. What makes the programmers job a bit easier are the various tools that can be used on a daily basis, in all of your coding wants and needs. One of these tools is called Git… Or is it GitHub..? As you can probably understand from my not-so-clever joke, the discussion of Git vs GitHub is an ongoing one – people constantly keep on confusing the two (they are different!). To “clear the air” once and for all, today we will talk about the difference between Git and GitHub. At the very beginning of our Git vs GitHub tutorial, I’ll tell you about programming and its correlation with Git and GitHub. Then, I’ll introduce you to both of the concepts separately. We’ll take a look at what is Hit and GitHub – how they came to be, what are they used for, and so on. After that, we’ll talk about all of the essential information related to the two concepts.

Introduction

So, then – first things first. Whether you’ve come here with a need to refresh your memory or this article is your very first time hearing about Git vs GitHub – it would be beneficial to take it from the very top and briefly talk about programming and its relation to the Git system. First of all, why should you even get into programming? Why is it such a popular career path? Well, I’ve hinted to this in the introductory part of this Git vs GitHub comparison article, but one of the absolute main reasons has to be the programmer salary. For a very long time now, there’s a general, unspoken consensus that programmers make a great living doing what they do. Thanks to certain salary report-type of websites, we can now at least somewhat imagine what that salary could be. According to Glassdoor.com, a senior programmer (someone who has been in the industry for many years and knows all of the intricacies of programming) can make around $86,100 USD per year, or $7175 USD per month. That’s a great salary! Another reason why people want to learn programming (and, in turn, find out the difference between Git and GitHub ) is because of the job stability that this skill provides. The field of IT is constantly developing and reaching new heights with innovative advancements and ideas. One single look at the job market will reveal that there has never been a shortage of a need for programmers. As popular as this career choice might be, there will always be new companies looking for everyone from complete novices all the way to senior programmers. This is a really big deal, since, with time, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a job that would offer an almost guaranteed stability, all the while having an amazing salary.

These are some of the main reasons why people choose to learn programming. Surely, there are usually a lot more that make up the whole picture (i.e. most programmers start out in programming simply because they love the activity and want to make a career out of their hobby), and these are just the mostly-referenced ones. Now, with all of that said, where does the discussion of “Git vs GitHub” come into play in all of this? If I had to give you a simple and straightforward answer without going into too much detail, I’d say that Git makes the programmer’s everyday life a lot easier. With that said, however, let’s not waste any more time and jump straight into the actual “Git vs GitHub” comparison. We’ll start things off by talking about what is Git and GitHub, and Git is the first one that we’ll analyze.

Git

If you were to ask any programmer what does Git mean to them, they would probably tell you that it’s an essential tool for any programming processes. This is especially true when it comes to programmers who work in companies – a lot of software development-based companies use GitHub as a mandatory requirement. But I’m getting ahead of myself already – let’s take a few steps back in this “Git vs GitHub” article and talk about Git. Git is defined as a distributed version control system. This means that if let’s say, you’re working in a team-based environment with other developers and programmers, all of the code that you and your colleagues write is going to be shared and represented between all of you (meaning that whatever happens or is done to the code, everyone will know immediately). Working in a company, this is a great feature since it allows for everything to happen much faster and in a more fluid manner. Git is primarily used to track changes in the source code. As I’ve mentioned a bit earlier in this Git vs GitHub article, its mostly used by software development-concerned companies. Git helps multiple programmers coordinate their actions and workflows, thus enabling and providing support for non-linear development and working conditions. Git, in itself, is infamous for many different reasons. First of all, as mentioned above, it allows companies to work in a non-linear way. With the use of branches, issues, and other similar functions, Git is a great tool if you know that you’ll still be making a lot of changes to the code once it goes live. Furthermore, Git is great at dealing with huge projects, has a great design, and so on. You can probably now see why the “Git vs GitHub” discussion is as relevant and important as it is. Programmers around the world use Git every single day – especially when working in a team. With that said, let’s move on and find out the difference between Git and GitHub by taking a look and what is GitHub and how does it relate to Git.

GitHub

In the “Git vs GitHub” discussion, GitHub is often seen as the alternative to Git. This is actually false on a fundamental level. Many people that wonder what is Git and GitHub tend to mix the two up. Since we’ve already covered the fundamental information about Git, let’s now talk about GitHub. Once we’re done, you will most definitely be able to know the difference between Git and GitHub.

On a fundamental level, GitHub is a hosting service. It is used to track changes and altering of specific source code. While it does provide all of the functions of Git, GitHub also adds quite a few of its own. A good way of looking at GitHub is to imagine that you’ve just received a job in a software development company. Let’s say, as a programmer. While applying for the job, the majority of the employers would have asked to see your GitHub profile – it’s like the LinkedIn for programmers. However, for the sake of the argument, let’s just assume that you haven’t used GitHub before, but since you have exceptional programming skills, you still got the job. Your employers might ask you some questions concerning the topic of “Git vs GitHub”, and if they see that you’re completely new to the subject, you’ll probably have to do a lot of research on your own to figure the platform out. While working, you will slowly get accustomed to submitting code changes to GitHub and waiting for approval from senior programmers of the team, so that your changes could be merged into the live version of the software. Furthermore, you will get used to using a thing known as “issues” – you will be able to assign tasks, track your progress, plan deadlines and project (task) importance, etc. There’s a whole lot of functions available on GitHub, and even though it is primarily designed for managing and working with source code, it is most often used by the whole company (if the other team members are at least a little bit tech-savvy, that is). So – now that you know the fundamental information about both Git and GitHub, the next logical step in this Git vs GitHub article would be to finally talk about the actual differences of the two platforms in question.

Git vs GitHub – How are they different?

Even though quite a few Git vs GitHub comparisons don’t really mention this, but the two are actually very different. Let’s try to figure these differences out using the above-mentioned information. First of all, let’s start with the foundations. As referenced a bit earlier in this “Git vs GitHub” comparison, Git is a system that is used to track changes made to the code. GitHub, on the other hand, is a hosting service. What does this service host? That’s pretty simple – Git repositories. To put it into very simple terms, Git is a tool that is used to make a programmers life easier, while GitHub is a service that is used to host Git projects. A good way of looking at this is to understand that there is only one “Git” – it’s a unique tool, just like you would have a specific car that you really liked. Sure, there are other cars around, but you’ve chosen this specific one because it best suits your wants and needs. If we continue to follow along with this example, then GitHub could represent a garage. There are multiple garages in which you could store your car in – they won’t change the actual car, though. I might perfectly well be over-explaining this, but I really want to “drive the point home” (no pun intended). While Git is the tool that you would use, there are multiple different hosting websites which you could then choose to host your Git repositories – GitHub is just one of them.

Why Use Git and GitHub? A Short Summary

Now that you know what is Git and GitHub, let’s quickly go through some of the main points for why you should, in fact, be using Git and GitHub.

• Simple. GitHub is actually rather simple to use, once you get the hang of it. Sure, it requires some prior knowledge with programming and code management, but if you’re already quite tech-savvy, the platform shouldn’t be a tough nut to crack.
• Great tool for planning. Plan your daily activities, assign tasks to your fellow team members, manage your own timetable – all of this is possible with the help of GitHub.
• Non-linear development. Git allows programmers to frequently change and alter the code without too much of a hassle. This doesn’t only save a lot of time but also streamlines the processes of software development.

With these and many more features, Git (and, in turn, GitHub) becomes an essential system to add to any programmer’s toolkit.

Conclusions

If you’re learning (or planning to start learning) programming, you should look into familiarizing yourself to Git and GitHub as soon as you can. As I’ve mentioned earlier, most employers are going to ask you to show your GitHub portfolio when you come in for a job interview. This fact alone should give you an idea of just how important and widespread the usage of Git and its related services truly is. Well, with all of that said, we have reached the end of our “Git vs GitHub” comparison (and, to an extent – introduction) article. I do hope that you’ve found all of the information that you were looking for, and that you now have a decent understanding of what is Git, what is GitHub and how these two correlate with one another. If you do plan to learn how to use this tool, don’t hesitate and do a lot of research online. If you’ve never used a similar system, it might be a bit difficult to wrap your head around at first, but once you get the hang of the fundamentals, it’s going to be smooth sailing from there on out. I wish you the best of luck in all of your programming ventures to come!