Every developer eventually loses work — overwriting a good version of a file with a broken one, or wishing they could go back to how their code looked yesterday. Git exists to solve exactly that problem, and GitHub builds a collaborative platform on top of it.
What Git actually does
Git is a version control system that tracks every change made to a project over time, letting you save snapshots called 'commits' as you work. If something breaks, you can look back through that history and return to any earlier snapshot — a safety net most developers eventually come to rely on daily.
Where GitHub fits in
GitHub is a platform that hosts Git repositories online, adding collaboration features on top of the core version control tool — things like tracking issues, reviewing proposed changes, and merging work from multiple contributors into a shared project.
- Commit: a saved snapshot of your project at a specific point in time
- Branch: a separate line of work, useful for building a feature without affecting the main project
- Pull request: a proposed set of changes, submitted for review before merging into the main project
- Repository: the full project, including its entire history of changes
Learning Git early avoids a painful lesson many developers learn the hard way — losing hours of work with no way to recover it.