There are many reasons why GitHub is important. Have you ever created some huge fancy project, whether it be code or just an essay or documentation, that you are really proud of and then you look for it later on and can’t find it? I know personally that has happened to me many times. Documenting things is something that I am very good at. Being able to find the things I documented, that’s another story.
What is GitHub?
For all of you who do not code, GitHub is also very relevant to you. Starting a portfolio of your work on GitHub will be one of the best decisions that you will make. As defined by Emeritus, “GitHub is an internet hosting service that facilitates software development using GIT repositories. It is a complete pro-developer platform that offers a wide range of free services like tracking, storing, managing, reviewing, and exchanging codes to build software projects.”
If that doesn’t make much sense, basically it is fancy words for saying its a giant storage system. A very fancy storage system. It is all based off Git which is version control for software you develop. The best part about GitHub that most people don’t know about is that it isn’t only for software. You can use it for many different things.
An example of something outside of software that GitHub is used for is different government documents. If you go to the community page on GitHub, you will see a list of all the governments that are using it and what documents they have saved there. This includes the U.S. Military and Intelligence. If they are using it, it must be secure and safe to use for your normal citizen like myself.
Why use GitHub?
There are so many different reasons to put GitHub to use and why GitHub is important in the development world. GitHub is the perfect tool for many different reasons. Although Git in general is a very useful tool, the Hub part of the word really makes a huge difference. It connects you with developers across the world making many aspects of software development much easier.
Showcase
If you are a software developer like me, you would use it to showcase your work. Say you are in the job market and looking for a new position. What better way than to have a link that shows all of your recent projects and code samples that you can send to a company? It is the perfect way to give people an easy viewing of your coding skills that you worked so hard on.
Collaboration
Another main use of it would be to collaborate on work. A lot of large companies such as Adobe, Dell, and even Facebook all utilize it for collaboration purposes. It is the perfect tool for collaborating on projects because it allows you to track changes throughout code. You can view what changes were made as well as who made those specific changes. A lot like Google Drive, you can see all the changes made to code or even to a document that you have been working on thanks to Git.
Open Source
Not to mention, it isn’t only internal projects that you can collaborate with other developers on. You are able to work on open source projects as well throughout the GitHub website. For example, say you found a great project on GitHub that pulls excel files out of your email inbox. You are able to fork that project and add new features to that project that someone else created. The project you forked was only the starting point and now you are on your way to creating great new features. Once you update it to your own account, you can get feedback and different opinions on your software right on the site.
Why GitHub Is Important Conclusion
While version control in general is important as a developer, being able to document your code is as well. Utilizing GitHub, whether it be to show of your solo work or to collaborate with a team, is a very important aspect in a developers world. Not only as a developer, as we learned, but in general saving important documents to GitHub can be very useful. If you are curious to read more about web development, check out our previous article on React Functional vs Class Components. Give us a comment below to let us know a unique way you used GitHub in the past. As always feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.
