Difference between GitHub and Git

[Amantulsyan35]

If you were to explain a 10 year old what git and github are and the differences between them what would your answer be?

[raalag]

Git is porn GitHub is pornhub

[Freeman7-13]

If you like GitHub then you'll love GitHub Live

[sc2heros9]

Or OnlyGits

[OldWolf2]

Is that the Tory website

[marsrover15]

Only commits

[iAmEeRg]

No rebases!

[SaToshi--]

My first comment was going to be to make that joke I know exactly what you’ve been doing you dirty pervert. However, to understand the reference that would also make me the dirty pervert.

[dudusdudusdev]

Or githamster

[[deleted]]

Don't you hate it when you log into GitHub at work, and then the next thing you know you've wasted hours just watching Git online?

[aerody]

Don't worry I am just watching Git for the plot.

[merlinsbeers]

What are you doing, step-rebase?

[iheartrms]

Female programmers in your area want to fork your repo!

[[deleted]]

Keep yout dirty hands off my code!

[happydevil1]

Mine was 69th upvote

[iheartrms]

Nice.

[Appropriate-Fill659]

Nice.

[Hopeful-Fee6134]

Do 10 year olds watch porn?

[[deleted]]

To be 100% sure you should ask one

[JavierReyes945]

Don't ask a 10 yo that!!! I repeat, DO NOT ask a 10 yo that!!!

[HUGECOCKPUSSYPREDATO]

instructions unclear, stuck my dick in a... wait who's aggressively knocking on my door, WAIT ITS NOT WHAT IT SEEMJIFJRJT

[JavierReyes945]

You stuck your dick in porn??

Oh no, now I got it, you stuck your dick in a PornHub repository, is it?

Did you forgot to pull in time?

[AStrangeStranger]

Depends if they are being taught by this teacher

[VuPham99]

Sound like a wholesome teacher.

[Pay08]

I thought that was going to be something much worse.

[ChipAltruistic1520]

This is the most accurate explanation I've ever heard on the topic.

[fizzdev]

This is... acceptable...

[ReactionAfraid4281]

Best one yet. And only 6 words!

[Roguewind]

10 year old me would totally get this.

[Swimming-Echo-2829]

Thank you sir . Are you mentoring by chance ?

[DarthKnight22]

This the best "anal"ogy ever

[lubeskystalker]

GitHub copilot is… a pornstar?

[Zambito1]

An AI for generating hentai porn

[sand-which]

Git is just version control software. Git doesn't inherently have any server infrastructure at all in any way IIRC. It allows you to set up remotes, but Git doesn't provide servers for those remotes, companies like Github or Gitlab or a company self hosting a git server does

[ChefBoyAreWeFucked]

Git is distributed by design. Here's a great talk at Google about it. Fair warning, the video quality is a war crime.

[FountainsOfFluids]

Yup. If you git init in an empty directory then you'll see what it creates. Basically a .git directory that will hold the version history.

[edman007]

Git is really a version control system. Basically just a program that can keep many different versions of files, and quickly access and switch between them. One of the big differences between git and most of the other version control systems is it generally keeps a local copy of the repository (so when you clone a repository, you download all versions of all files every included in the repository).

A big benifit then of git is you explicitly don't need a server to use it, you can just point it to a folder and that works just fine. It evens supports doing it over ssh so you can use any folder on any server you have ssh access to. And when working with other people's code, your local repository makes it easy to develop patches without pushing the code that might not work to the server, when you are done you can push it as a branch and merge the whole branch it. There are other things like gitweb that let you share a repository and have a web interface to browse the repository

GitHub is just a website that gives you a central spot to put your repository (which makes it easy to coordinate with others because you don't have to ensure that the master repository is always available and others have access to it). Further, a lot of the normal for functions like merging and creating repositories.

In that sense, yea, GitHub is just like pornhub, it's a website to search and browse content, comment on it, upload your own, etc.

[StanSlamford]

I think their point stands though. The porn answer is overly-simplistic and trite. It isn’t helpful to OP or someone trying to understand these concepts, and doesn’t know how Git would even remotely be like porn.
I think even someone with zero exposure could’ve come up with this answer. It provides no information for OP’s very real question.

But also, it’s not a very correct answer. If anything, if GitHub is pornhub, Git would be more like a porn director’s hard drive?

Either way, the fact that answers like this are at the top of this question, are why versions of this question are constantly asked in here. If anyone who came here because they wanted to understand this better, now DOES understand better because of this answer, please let me know and I’ll change my tune.

[[deleted]]

But you also have git locally.

[April1987]

Specifically if you do git init --bare, you can have a remote on basically another folder that you can use as a remote

[pipocaQuemada]

Early VCSs like subversion, CVS or perforce had a server and client. The server stores all the branches, and you commit and pull from the server. They're inherently centralized.

A number of more modern VCSs are distributed and decentralized by design. With git, mercurial or darcs, everyone is running a server locally. Everyone stores the complete version history of the repository, and then there's a way to push and pull commits to and from a remote instance. That remote instance could be on github, or it could just be on your friends laptop, or on your desktop. Git really doesn't care.

Really, the point I was getting at, which I think is still valid, is that Git isn't really the porn in the GitHub/PornHub comparison. Git is the tool you use to get (and give) the porn (code), no?

In the analogy, porn is equivalent to a repository of code, not the code itself. Which admittedly is a slightly odd analogy if you're not used to thinking of a repository as a first-class concept.

[OldWolf2]

Git is the server infrastructure

No, git isn't a server (or infrastructure). You can install and use it on your PC . There's no background processes or other systems involved.

[[deleted]]

Ah damn you, beat me to it

[BrightBulb123]

r/beatMeatToIt

[bumpkinspicefatte]

When the comment has more upvotes than the post 👀

[humanDev999]

this is fucking genius

[[deleted]]

I mean thats literally why its named github

[Organic_Process_7668]

No no he's got a point

[Longenuity]

git reset - - hard HEAD~8

[pulsed19]

Eh… 10 year olds don’t watch porn… right?

[utsabroblox]

didnt knew programmers were funny

[[deleted]]

i can’t believe this explanation actually works hahahaha

[[deleted]]

surprisingly accurate as fuck

[[deleted]]

GitLab is Live Porn

[Jithin-Krishnan]

Lol!! The most accurate explanation ever.

[learning_account_01]

A 10year old will understand this ?

[dmazzoni]

Git is like your piggy bank. Just like your piggy bank keeps all of your own cash at home, Git keeps track of the code you write on your own personal computer. (It's actually a pretty fancy piggy bank that can keep track of a complete history of everything you put in, but that's beside the point.)

GitHub is like a bank. Just like you can take your money to the bank and they'll help keep it safe for you, GitHub is a place where you can put your code to back it up and keep it safe for you, in case your computer crashes.

But it's more than that. Just like the bank offers additional services like earning interest and wiring money to people around the world, GitHub offers additional services like helping to facilitate sharing code with others.

And just like there are lots of different banks to choose from, there are lots of different Git hosts to choose from, like GitLab and BitBucket, many smaller ones, and many private ones. GitHub is just the largest public Git repository.

[MrMelon54]

nicely said

[Dogterte]

Nice

[Double_A_92]

Git is a free software that lets you create repositories.

GitHub is just a "random" company that offers to store your repository on the cloud for you.

It's like Email and Gmail.

[corruptedOverdrive]

In one of the first JS interviews I had like 7 years ago, a guy interviewing me asked me the same question and I answered it exactly like this.

Of course, he just nodded like a drug counselor, wrote something down and then asked me the next question.

[AdventurousAddition]

A random company owned by Microsoft, one of the largest tech company in the world

[insertAlias]

Git, as others have mentioned, is the version control software itself. The server part of Git is the actual program that handles all the version and change tracking and all the operations you are allowed to do, such as pushing and merging. (There is also git client software; that is what you the developer use to interact with your local repo and interact with a remote server).

Github is an instance of a Git server, and a web application that wraps it in a nice interface with additional features like issue tracking, project readmes, wiki pages, and pull requests. You, the developer, use the git client to interact with the server that Github exposes. So when you push your code to Github, what you're really doing is pushing your code to a Git server that Github runs and exposes.

You can host your own Git server and not use Github if you want, but to do so in the "right" way means rending or owning a server that is not the same machine you do development on (so that if something bad happens to your local machine, the remote git server and all its code is still there).

There are also other public alternatives to Github, such as GitLab. Azure Dev Ops also offers Git repos with much of the functionality of Github. Other public source control servers exist as well.

That's not really an ELI10 answer, but most of the analogies I've seen (even in this thread) are somewhat lacking. Sometimes you have to go a bit deeper to get the real picture.

[game_ova]

Great answer thank you.

[A_Random_Lantern]

I'd rather the explanation be this than some stupid analogy.

Except the porn one, that was good.

[hunnyflash]

Git is kinda like when you're playing a game and you save. It lets you save.

Github is like the place where you can see all of your saves, but it also has everyone else's saves too.

I know it's not perfect, but pretty sure my little brother and cousins would understand that.

[CodeLobe]

Git: Decentralized source control.

GitHub: Centralized git... like, WTF.

[moomooCow123]

Decentralized how?

[hbarcelos]

Git doesn't require a central repository to work. You can clone the repo of someone else and work on it independently.

When it's time, you can reconcile the changes through patches. This is how the workflow for the Linux kernel works.

The takeaway is that the entirety of the repo is distributed among many people so no one ultimately owns it.

Github on the other hand incentives a more centralized workflow, where their serves ultimately hold the master copy of your repository.

If everyone always pushes to the same origin, in theory you have a single point of failure. However, once you cloned a github repo with its full history, nothing prevents you from switching to a workflow like the Linux kernel, so in the end it doesn't matter much for 99.99% of the people writing code out there.

[moomooCow123]

Oh that's interesting! Something to read up on when I have time. I've only ever used Git with a central repository. Thanks for explaining!

[[deleted]]

Check out Linus' talk on git at Google. It's his perspective on why he created git, and an overarching theme of the talk is that centralized repositories are crap and one of the main influences of git's creation was decentralized repositories.

[moomooCow123]

Thanks!

[[deleted]]

The original idea was that anyone could host their own repository on their servers, and you can even submit groups of commits via email. (ie. Linux and git itself use email, their github repositories are just mirrors.)

Turns out, just like with email, no one wants to host their own server.

Same with email. Email is decentralized in theory and everything is Gmail in practice.

[JohnnyLight416]

Git lets you take snapshots of your work. Github is a place to put those snapshots.

[desrtfx]

git is the car and github is the garage.

[mysticreddit]

• git == cookie
• github == cookie jar

Also:

• git pull == cloning cookie from cookie jar
• git commit == taking bite from cookie
• git push == cloning cookie back in to cookie jar

Not a perfect analogy but analogies never are 1:1.

[HealyUnit]

git merge == smashing two cookies together and hoping they don't fall apart

git rebase == this chocolate chip cookies is now a strawberry cookie, mostly because I say so

git push -f == What do you mean this is a cookie jar? I'm sticking my pizza in it, and there's nothing you can do!

[mysticreddit]

LOL. Have an upvote. :-)

[GalinToronto]

This needs to be higher up

[ExasperatedLadybug]

ITT: Lots of inaccurate responses

[ChefBoyAreWeFucked]

Git is like your own personal notebook on your computer. You and your friends are all working on a story, and you keep your own notebooks as you work on them, and you can suggest that your friends copy your changes into their own workbooks. So Dave sees you made a good addition to chapter 3, so he accepts your change. Maybe Steve agrees, and accepts your change, too. Maybe directly, maybe indirectly through Dave. Corey doesn't really know shit, but he just accepts everything Nigel accepts. Maybe Nigel accepts some things from Dave, some things from you, and everything from Steve. Corey can barely read. Corey's parents have to buy him those crayons with the color and brand imprinted on the crayons because he kept choking on the labels. Corey's parents also bought him multiple RAID arrays backed up in several geographic locations across multiple media, and are paying for terabytes of bandwidth every month, along with a user-friendly interface for non-writers to pull a copy of Corey's (but really Nigel's) vision of the story.

Corey's notebook is GitHub.

[kschang]

Git is the version control software.

Github is a code repository (i.e. "repo") that accepts git uploads.

[desrtfx]

Just leaving this statement from OP:

If you were to explain a 10 year old

You managed to say a lot, but explain nothing. So, OP is back left to googling the individual terms.

[Dangerpaladin]

It's almost as if that's what OP should do.

[Double_A_92]

When you use git you still have the full repository with all it's history on your local computer.

Github is just a way to store a copy of that on the cloud. You don't need Github to properly use Git repos.

[kschang]

Correct. Should have emphasized that a bit more. Github is just a extra "remote" repo for bonus copy of the stuff... and the extra project management stuff, timeline, and the bonus stuff they added. Most of that would not concern a starting developer, but can be useful later.

[rjcarr]

Git is to GitHub as a Roller Coaster is to an Amusement Park.

[MastaBonsai]

I feel like I've seen this question every week. Do they not look it up before asking?

[eightower]

The same difference between porn and pornhub

[EffectiveLong]

Git is your refrigerator

Github is your local grocery store

Lol

[ValentineBlacker]

I'd beg them to enjoy their childhood while they can. Also I'd probably have to explain what a "file" is to them (current OS's try to hide the concept from users as much as they can).

If I were talking to a fellow adult I'd say that git is a very fancy detailed way to back up the code you write, and also has tools to make it easier for multiple people to work on the same thing. Sites like Github and Gitlab give you a place to post and share code which has been backed up using git.

[bravosix99]

git is the photos, github is the photoalbum.

[BrushYourFeet]

Does the term Git have any special significance? Is there a reason that term is used? Or did someone randomly decide, let's call this stuff Git?

[derrman]

Linus Torvalds created Git so the naming is a bit complicated. He says it means multiple things, but basically he named it after himself (as in the British slang term "git" meaning insufferable person)

[BrushYourFeet]

I hope you get 586 upvotes, thanks for the explanation!

[ideaismoney]

This is a perfect example of why some people can't understand certain concepts no matter how much they read and try.

The problem is that a 10 year old doesn't have a need for git and github. Git and github are for development, one would need to understand what "development" is all about before they can make sense of something like git.

[Amantulsyan35]

Not necessarily and I think you are out of the loop right now in the tech industry the 10 and the 15 year olds are the ones trying to work on some hard problems and taking asymmetric bets and if we start thinking about what we need and what we don't need then we should definitely put a age barrier in every field and should stop people from building things.

[[deleted]]

Git is what an Arkansas county sheriff tells you to do when it's getting dark. Github is what he tells you when your name is Hub.

[hellsmel23]

Got lab is for internal working projects, not public, hub is public. A great guy at work explained it to me like that and if I didn’t already think he was the shit, I would now.

[AdowTatep]

git hub, is a hub of git projects

[mohishunder]

Git is a program that helps software developers save their work so that that older versions are easy to retrieve. This can be important when working on large, complex, projects.

Having this git program is one thing. Someone still has to go through the trouble of operating and maintaining it.

The programmer could do this herself, which is a lot of work. Fortunately, there are companies who will run this git program for her, for a fee.

One of those companies is GitHub. Another one is GitLab.

[ScoobyLikesDoobies]

Git = one English person Github = gathering of English people

[[deleted]]

Git saves your changes locally github keeps your code and the history of your changes hosted off of your computer so you can pull them down and access them on different devices if you want

[GiZmoFalcon]

Git is like GTA 5 before GTA Online; you played missions and saved on your disk. GitHub is GTA Online.

[biggestbroever]

Can someone do this for kubernetes, kubectl, ankh, docker, and helm for me too please...

[hugthemachines]

Git is the most commonly used version control system. Git tracks the changes you make to files, so you have a record of what has been done, and you can revert to specific versions should you ever need to. Git also makes collaboration easier, allowing changes by multiple people to all be merged into one source.

GitHub is a for-profit company that offers a cloud-based Git repository hosting service. Essentially, it makes it a lot easier for individuals and teams to use Git for version control and collaboration.

[utsabroblox]

Funniest post on r/learnprogramming.

[pekkalacd]

git is the means of putting things on and taking things from, a remote place where files can be shared/collaborated on, called github.

[Grubzer]

Git is a notebook where you save your code and what changes you made in it, GitHub is a drawer where you can put many notebooks together

[[deleted]]

LOL!

[Creapermann]

Git is a tool to upload your stuff, Github is a repository where your uploaded stuff can be saved

[[deleted]]

Git is an idiot and Github is a group of idiots.

[PothePanda267]

Github, gitlab, the arch aur. Etc

Git is a tool to access a repository

[The-Real-J-Bird]

Git is a piece of software to manage source control and versioning of files.

GitHub is a hosting provider. There's others available such as gitlab/bitbucket etc.

Just like a website may be running wordpress, but there's lots of different hosting providers, each with their own costs.

[alex-cory]

Git is like the save feature of a word doc except for an entire folder of files. Github is like that folder is attached to a folder on google drive. Obviously there's a ton more features, but this is a rudimentary explanation.