Complete beginner needs help understanding git and github - feeling lost

I’m a computer engineering student and I feel really behind because I’ve never touched Git or GitHub before. All my classmates seem to know this stuff already and I’m worried about group assignments coming up. I found out about these tools when we got our first team project and everyone was talking about repositories and commits like it was basic knowledge. I tend to need more time to learn new things so I want to get a head start. Does anyone know good tutorials or learning resources for someone who has zero experience with version control? I really don’t want to slow down my team members because I don’t understand the basics.

Don’t stress about being behind - most students learn Git during their first group project anyway. I think of Git as a time machine for code. Each commit saves a snapshot you can jump back to if things break. Start with a personal project and drill the basics: clone, add, commit, push. Do it until it’s automatic. The Pro Git book is free online and won’t overwhelm you. Your teammates will want to help you learn, not see you as dead weight. That’s what group projects are for.

I was in your exact situation two years ago starting my CS program. Here’s what clicked for me: Git is basically a fancy save system for your code. You know how you used to make folders like ‘project_final’ and ‘project_final_v2’? Git does all that tracking automatically. Start with the official Git tutorial on git-scm.com - it walks through everything step by step. Practice making a simple repository, doing commits, and pushing to GitHub with just a text file first. Don’t jump into actual code yet. Once you get the add-commit-push workflow down, the rest makes way more sense. GitHub’s docs also have great beginner guides for the team collaboration stuff you’ll need later.

hey samuel, totally get how u feel! git can be confusing at first, but trust me, it clicks over time. check out some beginner vid tutorials on youtube, they really help! also, using github desktop makes things simpler than using the command line. u got this!

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