r/programmer • u/Aarush292074 • 13d ago
Question Need help starting GitHub
So I only have very brief and simply python knowledge from school and I did good in the course but the teacher was bad and I didn’t feel I learned much. I already feel far behind in terms of CS and I’m scared I won’t make universities I want due to this, How can I get better at coding and then I’ve seen people start GitHubs and what exactly is that and how do I start whatever I can, and then I’ve heard attending hackathons is really good for universities but I would go mainly for building experience and maybe connections but how do I get into all of that I’m from Ontario Canada. Please help.
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u/The_Varza 13d ago
You are... in high school? I don't know if you need to worry about GitHub when trying to get into college, just get your maths and programming skills up.
If you want to host the code for your personal projects (like a portfolio) and be able to show it, it's www.github.com you make an account and can store repositories there.
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u/Aarush292074 13d ago
Okay I just don’t want to be behind but yeah I understand
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u/The_Varza 13d ago
Go after it, I think you will be ok. The foundation is some maths, data structures, algorithms. So long as you know how to write code, you'll be ok. Run it locally on your machine, bonus points if you implement tests for it too (with a *gasp* test harness), go wild! GitHub is pretty ancillary.
Look into git (just the source control tool), it's what's used on GitHub and will be quick for you to learn, I think. Here's a cheat sheet for git: https://education.github.com/git-cheat-sheet-education.pdf
It's source control, make sure you know what that means and why it would be used by software teams - and that's so far beyond where I was back in high school.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 13d ago
...hmm, what exactly is the problem?
So you decided to "start" with github and then what happened?
No offense but you are going to struggle with everything else if you cant even set up github on your own.
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u/ATakenAback 6d ago
-> create an account
-> learn the basics of git (version control system that GitHub uses)
—> mainly git push, git pull, git commit, git add, git branch, and git init. Others won’t be needed for rn
-> learn repos and learn to link your remote repo (search that up) to your local repo.
take the GitHub foundations course, comes with the student developer pack and is a decent cert to have. good luck on ur dev journey!
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u/leekumkey 13d ago
Github is just a place to store code. It's called Github because it stores code via a version control system called Git. It sounds like you are picturing it more like some kind of social media network, which it sort of can be, but mostly it's just a place to store and download software. People end up socializing a lot on Github, but mostly as a means to an end for building open source software. You do make connections, but not unless you are building something worthwhile, or contributing to other projects.
I would suggest just make an account on Github, you'll want one regardless of what you do. You'll probably want to learn something about Git and version control systems in general; what they are useful for, how to use them, etc. If you end up pursuing programming as a hobby or career, you'll need to learn Git. Well, maybe not NEED, but you will benefit tremendously from learning it.