How I learned Git

About me

I am an open-source enthusiast and actively contribute to many projects, including the Linux Kernel. Around 100 of my patches are already accepted in Linux. I am also passionate about mentoring and motivating people to contribute to open-source projects and was Google Code-In Mentor in 2017 for OpenWISP and Sugar Labs. I have contributed to many other open source organizations like XEN, QEMU, Mozilla. My contributions can be seen on my GitHub profile:- https://github.com/simransinghal/
I have a wide breadth of experience under my belt having interned in Summer 2019 at Indeed as a Software Engineer. And, in Summer 2018, I did Machine Learning intern at Robert Bosch Engineering and Private limited, Bengaluru, India (RBEI).

Why I wanted to learn Git

Being an open-source contributor Git and GitHub are extremely important tools for me as all the contributors work remotely for open source projects. And When I decided to contribute to open source, I realized that Git is the most used tool and one of the prerequisite for starting with open source.
Let me tell you all about is GIt:-
Git is a commonly used version control system. Git helps in tracking the changes you make to your files and helps in keeping the record of what has been done, and you can revert to specific versions if you ever need to. Git also makes collaboration easier, allowing changes by multiple people to all to be merged into one source.

How I approached learning Git

First I opened my account on GitHub. And as there are multiple resources like free tutorials, blogs and video tutorials available on the internet. I didn't follow any particular tutorial but developed my understanding from multiple resouces.
I learnt more while practising it for my open-source projects and eventually I learnt.

Challenges I faced

Initially, it was difficult to even understand the concept of the local and remote repository. But as I moved on it was challenging to understand how branch works like merging two branches, resolving merge conflicts and understanding how to avoid merge conflicts. It was difficult to understand how rebasing of the branch works.

Key takeaways

My major takeaways from using Git is that my code is always available to me. No matter which computer I am using along with the versions of the changes in my code. Also, it makes life very easy when working on team projects as we can keep track of the contribution of each member in the team.

Tips and advice

My advice is that don't give up. Initially working on Git looks bit challenging but with the time you will start understanding each and every functionality of it.

Final thoughts and next steps

For now, I am looking forward to contributing to more open source projects and use git for that. Also, I am mentoring pre-university students as part of the Coding School.