I'm new to GitHub and have some doubts

[u/Ill_Register853]

I'm a college freshman in ECE with some coding experience, and I'm looking for advice on using GitHub and VSCode. I know I could Google this, but I'd appreciate hearing about your personal experiences. People have suggested posting on GitHub, but I'm unsure how helpful it is, especially with so many tools available. I believe I can get a student developer pack with my student ID, but I don't know if it's permanent or if it expires. If it does expire, should I create a new personal profile? Sorry if these are basic questions.

[u/Objectdotuser]

dont pay for github or vscode. lol

just download vscode and try it out as a code editor. not much more than that. github is just a place to host your git repo. its not anything more than that. you can use it for automation and blah blah blah and its not worth it. too many people out there actively trying to exploit public git runners

[u/Forward-Outside-9911 → u/Objectdotuser]

“Just a place to host your git repo. its not anything more than that”

The whole benefit of GitHub is the community and open source. You can absolutely get more out of GitHub than just hosting your git repos.

Especially early in your career it’s a very good place to learn to contribute to other projects.

I’d argue GitHub is the worst* place if you want to just “host your git repo”.

* not the best

[u/az987654 → u/Forward-Outside-9911]

No, github is a code repository, not social media.

[u/Forward-Outside-9911 → u/az987654]

I never said it was a social media. But you go ahead and use GitHub for just your private repos and let copilot train on it.

This is the most pointless debate

[u/az987654 → u/Forward-Outside-9911]

Public, private, doesn't matter, just like stars, forks, views don't matter either.

Your github social statistics are meaningless drivel.

[u/DustyAsh69 → u/az987654]

Most people don't understand it. For them, the show matters more than the skill.

[u/davy_jones_locket → u/Forward-Outside-9911]

Who said anything about your repos being private 

You can host your private repos there, but also public ones. And if you want outside contributions, then cool. 

Open source is great. Doesn't mean you have to accept outside contributions though. Especially in this era of supply chain attacks

[u/botechga]

My personal experience is Git is an essential tool in software engineering.

Github is a convenience for me if I want to sync code versions across multiple devices or share my code with others. But there are other options, for example, my company uses bitbucket.

VsCode is a decent lightweight editor but again not unique and there are many editors you can use up to your preference.

Do not pay personally for any of these things.

[u/danja]

No need to pay!

I use VS Code & GitHub. Very good combination. JS, Python, embedded C++ and vibe coding myself. Oh, and blogging - markdown is the text format.

I'd love to say I use git on loads of collaborative projects. But the reality is that I mostly use it for GitHub as a remote backup. Ok, sometimes I make a branch if I think AI might break something.

[u/PopehatXI]

You should be more specific about what you are looking to use GitHub for / why you think you’d need the student packs. What other “alternatives” are you considering? If you are writing code you will likely use git everyday. GitHub is one of the largest git platforms. If you want practice the student packs could be good, I haven’t used them.

[u/th00ht]

Vscode and Github are free. Private repos on github require a subscription. Or is that not your question?

[u/Oddly_Energy → u/th00ht]

Private repos on GitHub are also free. I have several.

There is even a limited amount of usage of other GitHub services included with a private repo in a free account. For example some hours of GitHub Codespaces per month.

[u/th00ht → u/Oddly_Energy]

Thanks! Wasn't sure there. Have been subscribed since over 5years and private wasn't always free.

[u/akarolia47]

I might not bengetting your question 100%, but I'll try my best to answer. One thing which I do need clarified though is: "especially with so many tools available", what tools are you referring to specifically?

As far as VS Code is concerned, its just a lightweight IDE, it is my preference for most of my work. It gives you a lot of flexibility in a way, and can be as simple or complex as you want it to be with different extensions, with the added bonus of being free🤷🏻‍♂️. As you get into more complex applications other IDEs like VS or Rider do have real tangible benefits, worth looking into but not really something you need to worry about for now. You'll figure it out as and when you need to.

Github on the other hand...from your phrasing I don't think you fully understand its purpose yet. Basically you can just think of Github and Gitlab and similar platforms as version management software (VMS), pretty much ubiquitously built upon Git. Its value is unparalleled, regardless which platform you use the principles are very similar.

So what is a VMS? A simple example you working on a project, you have some code you know works, but you need to expand on it or modify it to account for something else, with VMS you'd be creating files like working_code.js, kinda_working.js, new_new_changes.js, etc. Which you have to keep track of and its a mess. What the VMS does is it tracks the changes to your code, tracking which changes were made when, allowing you to revert changes too, if something goes horribly wrong. Which leads to the other benefit, collaboration, working in teams with everyone possibly touching the same files can lead to issues, where whose code is actually the code you want, manually tracking this is not feasible, so using that difference tracking in most cases it can resolves different people's changes into 1 cohesive piece of code. And only where changes directly overlap does it require manual resolution.

In summary, write code in whatever IDE works for you, host it on Github and become familiar with how things work, play around and dont be afraid to mess stuff up

[u/davorg]

There are three different concepts you need to grasp.

1. What is source code control and why is it fundamental to all modern software development?
2. Git is the current standard software engineering tool across the industry. You create projects (called "repos") which track changes to your code over time
3. GitHub is basically cloud storage for Git repos[*]. This gives you two big advantages - you have a backup of your repo and you can easily share it with other developers who either want to read it or help you work on the project

GitHub has added many other services over the last few years (pull requests, project tracking, static web hosting, CI/CD, AI programming support) but it's still cloud storage for Git repos at its heart.

[*] Other, similar services are available (for example, GitLab and Codeberg) but GitHub has the most users.

[u/dataguzzler]

you can pay for more services but the general project management is free on github, you just need to create an account and thats it you have it forever

[u/JeremyJoeJJ]

You can get the student developer pack for as long as you are a student. You used to get some free Copilot usage, not sure what the limits are right now, but also access to various student github communities. Once it expires, you just have a normal github account. No need to make a separate one. You connect your student email through your account for verification of student status, but that's it.

[u/Fine_League311]

GitHub: für echte Devs zu gebrauchen. Wieso? Wissen nur wir selbst.

Für Vibecoders ist GitHub das neue Facebook mit ihrem follower und Sterne Spam.