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Never Lose Changes Again
This is the place to start learning technical sophistication. Learn Enough Developer Fundamentals covers three essential tools for the aspiring computer magician: the Unix command line, text editors, and version control with Git. After this level, you will be in a position to collaborate with millions of developers around the world, even if you're not (yet) a developer yourself.
Version control solves a problem that might look familiar if you’ve ever seen Word documents or Excel spreadsheets with names like Report_2014_1.doc, Report_2014_2.doc, Report_2014_3.doc, or budget-v7.xls. These cumbersome names indicate how annoying it can be to track different versions of documents. Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous teaches you how to use Git, the most popular and powerful version control system.
A version control system provides an automatic way to track changes in software projects, giving creators the power to view previous versions of files and directories, develop speculative features without disrupting the main development, securely back up the project and its history, and collaborate easily and conveniently with others. In addition, using version control also makes deploying production websites and web applications much easier. As a result, fluency in at least one version control system is an incredibly valuable skill for developer, designer, and manager alike.
To be productive with Git, you don’t have to know everything about it—you just have to learn enough to be dangerous.
In Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous, you’ll learn how to create a Git repository for the files in a sample project consisting of a simple website. You’ll also learn how to commit changes to the project, thereby insuring that the changes won’t ever be lost.
You’ll also learn how to set up a remote repository at GitHub, a wildly popular site for sharing and collaborating on projects and code. This remote repo includes a handy file called README.md (written in the intuitive Markdown formatting language), which tells potential users and collaborators about your project.
As an essential next step, you’ll learn how to push project changes to the remote repository. Then you’ll learn the useful practices of making a branch, which lets you make changes in isolation—without changing the main project—and then merge the changes in when you’re ready to share them.
Finally, you’ll learn how to use Git to collaborate with other developers. This includes cloning (copying) repositories and learning what to do when changes from two developers conflict. You’ll also discover how Git (combined with GitHub) enables an amazing surprise bonus for your sample website—one that will give you bragging rights with all of your friends.
saying nice things!
Q: What is Jimmy Wales' favorite book?
A: It changes often. At the moment, it’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl. :)
Going through Git is wonderful. I am actually learning… I’ve done three other Git tutorials and still felt so lost. Doing it all now makes so much sense. It’s like a light bulb.
Michael does a great job of structuring this tutorial and thrusts the users quick into the world of Git with real examples and a hands-on approach. Just one of a series of great books. Highly recommended.
Thanks to the Git skills I started building with your tutorial, I now run Git workshops to teach other students this great tech.
I stumbled upon your website by luck a couple weeks back and since then I have gone through the Developer Fundamentals series, which I have to say exceeded my expectations and filled in many gaps in my knowledge which multiple other online tutorials failed to do.
I must say, this Learn Enough series is a masterpiece of education. Thank you for this incredible work!
I must say, this Learn Enough series is a masterpiece of education. Thank you for this incredible work!
I want to thank you for the amazing job you have done with the tutorials. They are likely the best tutorials I have ever read.
I have been trying to learn web development and programming on and off for the past 3 years and your website is the first one that I feel does the job right.
Just bought the new ebook and want to say keep up the great work!! The Learn Enough to Be Dangerous series re-ignited my desire to code after 10+ years of “meh”.
The Learn Enough Society and the courses are incredible. It’s the best value in the market of online courses in my opinion. Like you say, it’s learning to tech, which is very useful in our world.
I just meant to tell you: your tutorial books from the Learn Enough series are awesome! The books are well-written, clear, concise, super-useful, and even fun to read. Thank you so, so much for this! I have bought the first three and will buy whatever you publish next. Keep up doing this very good work and thanks again.
Have been following the whole “Learn Enough to Be Dangerous” series and am VERY impressed with it. I am a project manager who works with software developers daily. These sessions have provided me with a huge amount very useful information, to the extent that I now not only understand what the dev guys are talking about, but am starting to use the tools (command line, Git, etc.) that they use.
Michael Hartl is one of the best educators around when it comes to web development. I have been following him for a long time, and everything he produces is top quality. If you are looking for a quick way to become a thorough and productive professional web developer, Hartl’s books are a great place to start.
Hi, my name is Philip, and I’m a beginning learner of web development. I’ve dabbled in small ways in Ruby/Rails for about a year and a half. Occasionally, I write ruby scripts to solve problems at my job. I also dabble in learning: JavaScript, Ember, more Ruby/Rails, brief intro readings into Scala.
I’ve tried Codeschool, Codecademy, and I’ll stop there, so you don’t spend the next 3 hours reading all the different learning resources I’ve tried.
Ruby on Rails Tutorial (Rails 5) is undoubtedly, the most effective and educational resource I’ve ever come across when it comes to learning anything about web development or writing any code on any level.
Here’s what you seem to understand that everyone else just gets wrong: There’s a big spectrum between the very beginner basics: declaring variables, to voodoo, magical, incantational trickery of witchcraft, like building your own web server.
Almost all tutorials make this mistake. The first couple “lessons” are good for people who don’t even have a clue what computer programming is and then suddenly, there’s a big jump to what seem to be concepts that only seasoned developers have mastered.
Thanks for such a great, educational guide in Ruby on Rails.
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