GitHub and services like it, such as BitBucket, GitLab or Gitorious use git. Git is a distributed version control system written by the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, after he got frustrated with proprietary software. Git is similar to other version control systems such as subversion or CVS, but it’s distributed. What this means is that if you clone a git project, you have the entire project history. You can commit, branch and tag all on you local machine without interacting with a server at all. If you were working with subversion or another centralized VCS all of your interactions occur with the server.
GitHub and similar services bring all of the benefits of a decentralized VCS to a centralized service. GitHub also stores a copy of your project’s repository just like any other developer. Then, you basically designate that as the project’s central repository and all the developers push and pull their changes to and from that repository. GitHub takes this a step further by encouraging developers to fork a project’s repository and then use that as their own centralized repository. From there they can send “pull requests” to the main project with their changes and then the project maintainers can review them before deciding whether to include them in their project or not.
So what are the three best reasons to use GitHub?
It makes it easy to contribute to your favorite open source projects.
Today, nearly every open-source project uses GitHub to manage their project. GitHub is free if your project is open source and includes a wiki and issue tracker that make it easy to include more in-depth documentation and get feedback about your project. Symfony, Ruby on Rails, and Django all use GitHub (symfony, rails, django) to develop their project and accept contributions from the community. Even the GitLab source is available at GitHub! If you want to contribute, you just fork their project, make your changes and then send them a pull request using the GitHub web interface.
GitHub has some of the best documentation around.
You won’t run out of content when you use GitHub, thanks to a well-padded guide and help section for articles that you can pull up for practically any topic on earth, for as long as it is related to a git. It’s got content for helping you learn about generating SSH keys. A guide for the best git workflow is available. Samples on gitignore (and more) are abound for your next planned project, among other things. You would not need to look elsewhere for all the information that you need.
GitHub has Gists and GitHub Pages, too.
A while back, GitHub rolled out a feature called Gists, which lets you convert one or several files into a working git repository. This new feature converted sharing and tracking changes made to configuration files and even simple scripts into a whole new level of easy. While they aren’t as rich in features like a full-blown GitHub repository, they really work well even if you are without a paid account. GitHub pages, on the other hand, lets you host static websites by simple assigning HTML pages onto another, separate repository – the way you would any other type of git repository. With this, blogging can be done off the bat as well as updating with additional documentation or bumping up its web presence.
Become a better developer.
Probably the most beneficial part is, it help you to become a better developer. You can go through different people code as well as create something new and show it to people around you. A great way to showcase your work and attract recruiters and bigger companies. Nowadays a lot of companies look into your github profile too and if you are not from some great university or college building a good github profile certainly going to help you.
I hope I have made some valid points regarding GitHub. If not, there is always more.
Version control your projects.
Push your projects to GitHub and let the world know how nice and useful code you write.
Explore other’s projects on GitHub, get inspired code more, or contribute to their project.
Collaborate with others, by letting other people contribute to your projects or you contributing to other’s projects.
Maintain useful lists. I didn’t find anything better then creating lists on GitHub using markdown. I like how clean it looks.
Learn Git.
Link your nice GitHub profile while applying for grants, jobs, in your resume. It makes things better and helps.
These reason suffice to make any developer use GitHub. So get started on it.
Also find me on github : Suzal3579