foundation Estimated learning time: 5 h

0.2 Git and GitHub for your own work

You can version your work, recover a mistake, and show a green history to a recruiter.

Before:nothing requiredUnlocks:01. Mathematics for Machine Learning02. Python — Basics to Advanced

Git is how work survives mistakes and how employers see evidence that the work happened, and this topic makes the daily commands reflex: commit, log, diff, branch, merge. It sits in the opening module because every project from here on lives in a repository. The common confusion is treating Git as a weekly backup; small frequent commits are what make errors cheap to undo, and a green contribution history is a portfolio artifact in its own right.

Work through these

  • init, add, commit, log — the daily four

    The four commands that cover almost all everyday version control: start a repository, stage changes, record them, and read the history. Everything else is built on these.

  • Branches, merges and resolving a conflict

    Branches, merges and resolving a conflict are how you try something without endangering work that already runs. The conflict part is the one worth practising deliberately, on something disposable.

  • Remotes, push, pull, and the pull-request flow

    Pushing to and pulling from a hosted copy, and proposing changes for review. This is also how your work becomes visible to somebody deciding whether to interview you.

  • README, .gitignore and not committing data or keys

    A description of the project, a list of what should never be committed, and the habit of keeping data and credentials out of the history. A key committed once stays in the history even after you delete the line.

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Links last checked 29 Aug 2026.

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