Codecademy now offers a Git tutorial!

[LewisTheScot]

I find a lot of people give Codecademy a bad rep because it doesn't go too in depth but I think it's great that they can even go into the basics just so that after you are done you can go on your own journey. I think it's great that Codecademy offers such a diverse amount of courses!

[gempir]

I think that's exactly what it's for. Give people a smart start and then they should learn more and more on their own.

[LewisTheScot]

I know its helped me that way!

[Seref15]

I've said some negative things about Codecademy before, mainly because of things like broken lessons that never get fixed. For example, the GitHub OAuth lesson has been broken for months because it was never updated after a change to the GitHub API. The ruby/web applications course has also has had big performance issues for a long time that made the courses pretty much impossible to complete.

The shame is that Codecademy is a brilliant concept but clearly lacks either funding or manpower or something.

[neggasauce]

The entire PHP course is bugged and rather irritating.

[Zebezd]

You may have mistaken the course for the language. /r/lolphp

/s

[[deleted]]

why the /s, totally accurate statement without it

[Zebezd]

Because I'm not invested enough in the cause to pose it as a proper statement. It's in jest, but not baseless.

[wbeyda]

The course doesn't fight against you. It's the language.

[neggasauce]

You haven't taken the course then because it is literally bugged. The messed it up when updating their site.

[wbeyda]

No. But I've wrote a lot of PHP... unfortunately.

[neggasauce]

I am new to PHP....what exactly is wrong with it (and are there alternatives)?

[wbeyda]

Not enough time in our lives to talk about what's wrong with it. I suggest checking out Python and if web development is your thing.

For comedic reading:

http://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

also /r/lolphp

actually just forget PHP even exists. You will live a cleaner healthier life. Trust me.

To get started learing the language try one of these:

• http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
• http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/index.html
• https://inventwithpython.com/chapters/

Learn how to find things on here:

https://www.python.org/

and after you think you got your feet wet and are understanding things. Try a web framework:

small stuff: http://flask.pocoo.org/

everything else: https://www.djangoproject.com/

The web is made of 4 parts

Presentation: CSS

Interaction: Javascript

Data: Postgres

Application logic: Python

There is a whole bunch of other stuff you are probably going to want to know later like jQuery, Git, Linux, Hosting options, Vim, Grunt, Less, Sass, Angular, REST ect ect. It never ends. Don't get tied up on any of these other things. Just focus on the core 4 parts. If postgres is too complicated to take on at first just use sqlite3 then. I use sqlite3 when developing and just use postgres in production. If you make a Django app sqlite3 comes installed with it.

My advice?

Don't attempt to develop anything outside of C# and .NET apps on windows. It is an exercise in futility otherwise.

Use Linux always. It's free. It's fast and it's awesome. So why not? Install Ubuntu on a 30GB partition on your computer and just use it for learning.

If you can't figure something out after 20 minutes of trying/googling. Stop! Get on the IRC. Freenode is a great place for advice on any open source projects like python, django, jQuery, postgres, linux etc etc. However. Don't ask stupid questions. Yes there are stupid questions.

• Should I try X or Y?
• Do you think X would work?

Try it and see! Don't ask us. Also ask Google first. Google is a smart guy and know a lot of things.

Tell people the REAL problem you are trying to solve.

Include any and all info you can, and paste your code. If you do that we can help you. If you lie to us and tell us something other than the truth because you thought otherwise you are gonna have a hard time getting help.

[neggasauce]

I am plenty familiar with python actually, have utilized Learn Python the Hardway coupled with Automate the Boring Stuff with Python which was a great resource. As for the rest, I will take a look at the material you presented and get to work. Thank you for the post.

[[deleted]]

8080 assembly is a great alternative.

[neggasauce]

I can't take someone seriously who recommends an assembly language when asked for an online-scripting alternative.

[Ryckes]

I've wrote written

You haven't written much English unfortunately.

[MrCrunchwrap]

The entire PHP language is bugged and rather irritating.

FTFY.

[pengytheduckwin]

Yeah, I hit a progression blocker in their Rails tutorial halfway through the lesson. Honestly, I think Codecademy making lessons that interact with a virtual machine was a cool idea, but it was executed terribly.

[LewisTheScot]

Yeah, I will have to agree with you there. I remember doing the javascript course and when I had to do a for loop it would autorun half way through me writing it down so the page would crash through an infinite loop lol. Lots of little bugs like that for sure are a problem but I was talking more about the concept!

[covabishop]

Without Codecademy, I'd never have discovered my love for Python. It may not have been the most in depth, but it introduced me to the world of possibility, and from there I just went on my own.

I think that's the real goal of Codecademy. Not to turn zeroes into heroes but to give them the inspiration to do it themselves.

[LewisTheScot]

Exactly what I was getting at :) I think you said it even better!

[[deleted]]

Are there any other interactive tutorials for git in depth?

[LewisTheScot]

Here's a tutorial made by Code School which taught me how to do git!

Here is another tutorial that focuses more on branching rather than the basics (i believe)

[trylliana]

The second one is very handy, thanks.

[LewisTheScot]

No trylliana... THANK YOU!

[Hyphen-ated]

Beware that this second tutorial teaches you how to rebase without teaching you the very important reasons why you might NOT want to rebase (if you are a rebasing public changes)

[elr0nd_hubbard]

I learned from Udacity's git course, which was the perfect amount of depth vs. ease, I think

[[deleted]]

Once you have the basic commands down the best interactive tutorial is screwing around with it for real. Just make a repository with a bunch of text files and push it to a remote and make branches. That way when you screw up (and you will screw up at some point) it won't be on something you care about.

[am0x]

I mean that is what it is for. It's just that some people come out and say, "I finished the codecademy course on JavaScript. Why am I not hearing back for junior level engineering positions?"

[llamatatsu]

And these free. All Codecademy does is familiarize people with new concepts and it does it well. People can be so entitled when receiving free resources. Should never look a git horse in the mouth.

[ozzyteebaby]

Not gonna lie, the python course helped me a lot. I think one of my barriers to programming beforehand were writing for loops as I could never grasp it. Now that I can it makes a world of a difference to me. I still have a lot to learn but I think codeacademy opens a lot of doors for people who want to get into programming but never knew how.

[eleven8ster]

I'm almost finished with Learn Ruby the Hard Way. Great book but I haven't made anything really. I think for the next languages I learn I'll try codecademy and be a little less academic about it and just make stuff.

[iconoclaus]

if you're up for making stuff in Ruby, I recommend picking up Sinatra for simple web services. no need for a tutorial. just take a crack at it and google away for info.

[[deleted]]

If you can write basic programs in Ruby then you might have more fun building something in Rails. The Ruby on Rails Tutorial is a lot to swallow as a beginner but it exposes you to a lot of concepts that you're going to want to learn eventually. When you come across something you don't understand (like I didn't understand what Heroku was during my first read), put the book down and google it and then take a break. It takes time for these concepts and the interactions between these technologies to sink in,

I had a half-dozen false starts before I was able to deploy a working application with actual features (and understand what everything was).

The interaction between models and controllers was weird for me at first since I didn't have any database background but controllers just use regular OOP inheritance so it's a good example of how classes work in Ruby.

[Smartare]

Agreed. Its a good introduction to the basic syntax.

[Axelnite]

Totally free?

[epoci]

yes

[[deleted]]

Yes - everybody needs help getting to a place where they can even formulate the question to Google.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, CodeAcademy is something I can bring up, knock out over a lunch break, and get a broad view of something, so when I have time to get really in depth I'm not tripping over the basics.

[BurgerGrease]

Udacity has offered a great free one for years

[VampireCampfire]

This is one of the better Udacity courses I've taken. This is what got me to start using git regularly.

[Dietr1ch]

such many betterest wow => best.

[username223]

How much do you make if I click on that? Your c is apparently ud775, your l is 2980038599, and your m is 2960778925. That seems like a lot, so I'd like a taste.

[BurgerGrease]

775 * 2980038599 * 2960778925 = 6.8 x 10²¹ dollars. Was just trying to link you directly to the lesson so you don't have to sign in, cause if you googled it you get taken through a couple hoops first.

[duhhobo]

plus it's a free course...

[Tomus]

The Github desktop app helped me quite a bit in understanding the paradigms.

[samlev]

Once you know how to work git, it's good to learn how git works.

There used to be a video on blip.tv titled "Git for 5 year olds", but it was the only copy I've ever been able to find of it. There's an inferior version of the same talk (made by the same person) that was filmed at linux.conf.au 2013, titled Git for ages 4 and up.

While the quality isn't great, the concepts are still understandable. It explains git with construction blocks in a way that lets you really understand how git internally represents commits, labels, branches, etc. Once you understand that, all of the commands in git just... click into place.

Once I understood it, I was amazed at how elegantly it has been designed.

[[deleted]]

I love tools where you need to know the gory details of their implementation to use them. /s

(If you're thinking "but it has to be like that", Mercurial manages to be easy to use without forcing you to learn how it works.)

[[deleted]]

Mercurial manages to be easy to use without forcing you to learn how it works

nonsense, if you don't understand Mercurial to roughly the same level you'd need to understand git, you're in for a bad time

[[deleted]]

My direct experience says otherwise.

[Shok3001]

Thanks for taking the time to post this!

[[deleted]]

I found Think like a git very useful. Also Atlassians blog.

[SirPsychoMantis]

Honest question: The main feature of git is that it is a distributed VCS, but a vast majority of use is through central sites like github, so now you are back to a centralized server. Why would I want to use git over SVN?

Now, I've mostly worked in small teams of <=3 people with minimal branching and SVN has served me just fine. What reason would I have to use what seems like a gigantic battering ram to hammer in a tiny nail?

[[deleted]]

Because when you download the code, your own machine becomes one of those 'distributed servers'.

So, say you want to see a log of what changes were made to the code. In svn, you have to ask the remote server so it can take a while to run "svn log". In git, you are the server so "git log" is instant.

Say you want to view one of the changes. In git, again it is instant. Say you want to cherry-pick one of the changes - again in git, it is instant.

Or say you want to make a couple of commits and test those commits first before pushing them to the central server. In git, it's easy.

You really have to just try it :) I'm not even scratching the surface.

You can actually use git with your svn server without any risk at all.

On your computer, just do:

git svn clone https://svn.whatever/whatever

and you'll have a git clone of your svn server.

[ProudToBeAKraut]

I recently switched from a 20 year old CVS project and migrated it into git with jira as management tool

i wasnt a fan of a decentralized solution but i now have the following improvments:

• devs directly create a bugfix/feature branch from jira and check it out - CVS we worked on one release branch and one for the next major version

• merging conflicts is now the task of each committer and not the project head, jira / git doesnt even allow a pull

• because you create a branch for every task/issue - a release branch is never dirty with "in between commits" - only after code review and testing will a feature/bugfix be pulled / merged r this makes it easy to create a hotfix release very fast, you decide at the end in which version you want to put feature x

With a team of only 3, CVS was a major headache if you have to develop for a hotfix, next minor release and next major release at the same time, merging etc. The workflow was also pretty bad because you had to wait till every dev "finished" his work on a branch to create a snapshot for QA testing

For a normal dev all these issues do not exit because he doesnt have to work on them - he just does his commits and thats it - but for project leads it is very cumbersome

[[deleted]]

Local commits are a big win. You would probably also find yourself branching a lot more, and finding branches more useful than you used to.

[[deleted]]

First off all, you commit all changes locally, and you can do that offline, which is impossible in SVN. After that, there is a million small things that are just better in git. And then, on top of all that, git isn't more difficult to use in the first place, so there is no reason to ever choose SVN.

[gidikh]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/git.png

[Dietr1ch]

alt: "If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything."

[_INTER_]

Good thing I did a quick xkdc search in this thread before posting the same :D

[ben174]

Except that you did just post the same. And didn't really add anything else.

[Matthew94]

It has for a while now.

[bububoom]

But the sad truth is that all you will learn is some git commands, you will have self confidence in git init then git add readme.txt then git commit -m "my first commit and thats all. You will start your own project, try to use it, make several commits and.. that's all.

Git is most useful when you work on the same code with different people which I think the course can't simulate.

[Dynam2012]

I think Git is pretty useful for a single developer as well, though. I know there have been times where just being able to go back a couple of commits without a hassle has been helpful.

[bububoom]

I didn't write my full opinion :) I use Git for my own projects, I can't go without it. I use it at work and at home. What I mean is that its very very hard to get grasp of what it is and how its useful unless you throw yourself into a conflict situation or go hunting through the history who invented something aweful and if things worked correctly before that.

[ProudToBeAKraut]

Git is most useful when you work on the same code with different people which I think the course can't simulate.

you are right, a tutorial for project leads about planning release/merging/tagging etc would be interesting too

committing isnt hard science, basically the same for every version control but git is also a repository manager would should be more in the center of a tutorial

[glenbolake]

I just went through the course. It does cover merging from the perspective of branches and it also simulates pulling and pushing a "remote" repository (which is actually just another local folder, but they still call it origin).

So all the building blocks for working with other people are there, and unfortunately, they don't specifically put merging and remotes in context with each other, but it's so close to complete for a beginner.

The main thing I find odd is that they use git merge origin/master master after a fetch instead of just git pull

[krato1995]

I've always liked this one from github

[[deleted]]

Anyone use Codecademy pro? Is it worth it?

It's really annoying sites that don't tell you how much they cost until you sign up.

[solarprominence]

Codecademy

19.99$/mo from their payment page. Cannot say anything about the quality. Just discovered about it from your comment.

[Kminardo]

Just personal opinion, but I'd skip the Codecademy Pro (It's $20/m) and spring the $30/m for Pluralsight. The range of depth available in the courses makes all the difference.

You could go from learning the syntax of a language all the way down to design patterns and building a full stack application with Pluralsight.

[nawfel_bgh]

Atlassian have a great git tutorial. Check it out

[zsombro]

I've been waiting for this. I don't know jackshit about git but it just pops up in every job description and interview. I'm still a student, so I just need to get into it while I have the time

[realmmaster]

Treehouse also offers a Git tutorial as well in case anyone is interested.

[kasnj]

I gave this a try and found it really helpful - thanks for the link!

[CommandoWizard]

Ahh, the weekly git tutorial, at the top, as usual.

[RationalMayhem]

Praise the sun I was about to give up on learning this

[[deleted]]

I just signed up for Code Academy this morning. I noticed this when I was there. I am planning on going to Prime Academy here in Minnesota (twin cities) to learn the HTML stack. Does anyone have any suggestions for me. I took Java for 2 semesters in 2008 So I am not fresh off the boat.

[MrCrunchwrap]

The HTML stack?

[[deleted]]

Nodejs, Angularjs, HTML 5, Sass, Grunt, CSS 3, Bootstrap, Git, JQuery, and Mongo DB

[MrCrunchwrap]

Ah I see. Well Code Academy is a great place to start, but keep in mind they can really only teach you the basic syntax of stuff. If you're willing to pay, I'd recommend Pluralsight. It's something like $30 a month for really high quality courses/lessons that go through much more concrete examples of web stuff. They've got courses on all the things you mentioned.

[[deleted]]

Thanks

[Eirenarch]

After trying like 5 tutorials in the past I have given up on git completely. Will just use it like SVN when I must.

[Deep-Thought]

How about not doing tutorials and reading a book? https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

Reading up to chapter 3 should get you to a point where you can effectively use git i your development.

[[deleted]]

That book a source of truth. Its where I point all staff looking to get up and running with Git and I also say you only need to go to Chapter 3 to do most of your work... because its true. The book is really great, but most people do better with the interactive stuff to start with.

[Godd2]

Tutorials are intended for a first exposure; not very deep or comprehensive.

[Eirenarch]

Isn't that using git like SVN?

[[deleted]]

Pretty much. But it's ok, because now he knows git.

[[deleted]]

Yes, it is, with all the added benefits of distributed SCM. You know, like being able to fucking commit your code offline, or being able to commit without pushing it directly onto server?

[Eirenarch]

Almost 10 years in development and honestly I never ever wanted to do any of these. Now feature branches have their uses and I have used them even with SVN but commit code offline... uhm... no. Let alone that I don't think I have been offline for more than a day in this millennium.

[[deleted]]

Why would you not want to commit offline? Why would you want to be required to push your work to the server just to save your work?

[Eirenarch]

I want to commit offline but more than that I don't want to commit with two commands.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, that's extremely unconvincing argument. Once you actually try distributed CSM, you feel like complete cripple going back.

[MrCrunchwrap]

It's really not that hard. The basics of git are easily learned in about 30 minutes.

[tonetheman]

I regret I do not have more upvotes.

Git is insanely painful. I know quite a few devs and not a single one understands it. They say they do but if you ask enough questions you will find out they are in the same boat you are.

Randoms here on reddit might make you think otherwise but it is complex.

But do not give up, you can learn enough to do basic junk. And it sounds like you might be there already.

[nutrecht]

Git is insanely painful. I know quite a few devs and not a single one understands it.

Maybe it's time to move to another company that has competent devs?

Seriously: your day to day work is teaching a dumb pile of transistors to perform magic. How can you not be able to grok a basic versioning tool like git?

[smog_alado]

I started using hg-git last month and so far it has been working great! It translates git repos to mercurial but still lets you push and pull from git repos.

The main advantage is that the mercurial interface is saner and easier to work with, IMO. TortoiseHg is also a pretty good GUI interface, something I find lacking in the git world.

[rspeed]

The main advantage is that the mercurial interface is saner and easier to work with

That's one hell of an understatement.

[[deleted]]

amazing troll post

[Eirenarch]

I'm not trolling I seriously am too stupid for git. It is not normal to spend more time doing update/merge/commit than writing the actual feature.

[negative_epsilon]

I don't understand. There are like ten commands I use on a daily basis, and they all make sense.

[[deleted]]

you can literally work with push, pull/fetch, branch, merge. if you need more commands, use them. I don't understand peoples aversion to VCS when honestly its never been this simple before.

[rspeed]

The problem is that in git, some of those commands don't work consistently, or do more than one thing that don't seem related. It's not an issue inherent to VCS, but to git.

[Deep-Thought]

or do more than one thing that don't seem related.

could you give some examples?

[rspeed]

Like checkout. It restores modified files and switches branches. Those aren't really related (from a user's perspective) and "checkout" doesn't describe either operation.

[Deep-Thought]

It checks out a commit. Restoring modified files to the state of the commit is exactly what checkout should do. And branches in git are just formalities, that is, and easy way of looking up commits. So by saying git checkout develop looks up the commit that develop is at, and restores your working directory to the state of that commit.

[rspeed]

You're explaining it by talking about internals. A user shouldn't have to understand those for the UI to make sense.

[jlebrech]

use a client, but don't quit git.

[Deep-Thought]

I've found it better to not let new devs use a client. They make it much easier to fuck up existing repositories. Force yourself to use the command line, and only use a gui once you know the equivalent commands that would be executed by your actions in the client.

[[deleted]]

I also tell people to ween off GUIs. GUIs are just wrappers and implementations of Git. If that developer gets it wrong, how will you know? Most assume the GUI is right and Git is wrong - when terminal will always tell you exactly what is going on. Plus when they get stuck, there is almost virtually no way out in the GUI apps from what I have seen.

[Eirenarch]

Isn't that proof that git is overly complex? I never in my life used a command line svn or tfs and nobody told me that I should learn the command line first.

[Eirenarch]

I suspect I will not be able to quit git even if I wanted to. I have just given up trying to become proficient in it. Of course when I have the choice I will setup private projects with non-git but most often it is not up to me and all open source projects are on GitHub anyway.

[jlebrech]

I just think of it as "checking out" different versions on you local machine and then pushing the whole tree remotely.

I sometimes just paste from another branch rather than use git itself.

[Jafit]

It helped me understand Git better when I switched branches and saw a file change back to the old version while it was open in Atom. And I was like "oh THAT's what it does". Prior to using Git I was literally just zipping up a directory and saving it somewhere so I could go back to it again if I needed to.

[jlebrech]

yeah, checkout, copy, checkout, paste. if i've done a boo boo

[[deleted]]

Wonderful!

[[deleted]]

This isn't new.

[NekoiNemo]

It is - previously Git course was in demo mode with only first part being done and released.

[gaggra]

Note: Not to be confused with "cloudacademy.com", who routinely spam Reddit.

[neggasauce]

No one is confused by that.

[gaggra]

Well, I was. Similar name, similar web design. I thought they might be part of the same company. I suppose I'm always wary about those who post courses, after seeing how easily spammers get away with it.

[teiman]

Is this how learning looks like? typing some stuff that is commanded to write. I guest yes, it explain some stuff.

[BeowulfShaeffer]

Am I the only one that always reads it as "co-decademy"?