Day 3: Git, GitHub, and JavaScript Basics

Dylan Thorwaldson
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Today had nothing to do with Christina Aguilera, but all the other Google image results for “back to basics” were so boring.

This morning was all about Git and Github. It is a good feeling to finally understand the difference between the two. I feel like I’ve gone through several differenct resources to try to understand Git on my own, but today it finally clicked for me thanks to the Galvanize instructors.

Git is a VCS or Version Control System that solves important problems for programmers. A few things it does are as follows:

  • Help to catch bugs before they reach production
  • Help organize different versions of files/projects
  • Enable/facilitate collaboration so many people can work on the same thing at the same time

It was good to interactively walk through the basic git commands today. The ones we mostly covered are:

  • git init
  • git status
  • git add .
  • git commit -m
  • git push

There are so many other commands and flags that I am excited to also learn, but it was mostly just good to finally feel like I have a firm grasp on the basics.

We then talked about GitHub and how to tie a GitHub repo and a local git repo together, and how to push and pull things back and forth. I liked the analogy from the homework, which related git to a rocketship and Github to Mars. For some reason that really has stuck in my brain. We also learned today that Github is really just a remote hosting service for git files. So interesting. I can’t wait to put these commands to work when we are actually committing real work and needing to keep track of different versions of things because we are building something real!

The afternoon was dedicated to JavaScript basics, hence Christina Aguilera pictured above (I guess). Anyway, it was good to review the basics. And when I say basics, I truly mean basics. Like, we went over primitive data types and control flow only, and it took all afternoon. The data types we covered are Numbers, Strings, Booleans, Undefined and Null. I was glad to spend so much time because it has been awhile since I have looked at things like Undefined and Null and the difference between them, and I want to be totally fresh on the basics before we dive into more advanced JS. And that dive is going to happen as soon as tomorrow morning. Functions, Arrays, and Objects. In depth. Let’s do this.

The Road to Code

A place for people taking their first steps into the wonderful world of software development

Dylan Thorwaldson

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Software Engineer

The Road to Code

A place for people taking their first steps into the wonderful world of software development

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