How should a novice explore into the world of git ? (cafe.coffee-break.cc)

submitted 5 days ago by LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev

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Imagine a young explorer who's just heard that word, "git". But it actually means an entire world. How is this young explorer supposed to dive into this mysterious world with just a machine in hand ?

He's got vs code though !! And he's also got fish and zsh on WSL !

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[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That picture you included is kinda weird and misleading IMO.

First thing: Ignore the "central repository". There is none. git works entirely locally (this confuses the hell out of people who grew up with CVS/SVN, for some reason). You CAN push and pull to other people's computers, if you want, or your own other computer; all Github or whatever is is a "someone else's computer" in the cloud that you can push to. But you also don't need a remote repository at all. Most of ours don't have one.

Seconding https://learngitbranching.js.org/. It's quite nice.

Some stuff you should know:

A commit is a snapshot of everything in the project (that was added to git at the time).
A branch is basically just a movable tag pointing to the latest commit, with which you can get to previous commits by walking the chain backwards; when you make a new commit, you move the branch to point to it.
You can make alternate timelines by going back to a previous commit (without moving your branch pointer), making a new branch pointer (and switching to it), and editing/committing/etc. That's why they're called branches.
There's an undo history for where your branch has been, git reflog. Can save your butt if a rebase or whatever goes sideways and you get screwed up.
All your history is in the .git folder in your project folder. Everything. If you back that up you've got the whole history of the project.

-- Frost

[-] LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 1 points 2 days ago

I'm unable to play that game. I need more interactive guidance than what the website provides.

Do the developers have any account on GitHub where I can pull up an issue ?

[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 1 points 2 days ago

I have no idea honestly!

-- Frost

[-] LoveEspresso@cafe.coffee-break.cc 1 points 2 days ago

https://github.com/pcottle/learnGitBranching

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this post was submitted on 31 May 2026

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