GitHub is like a personal exhibition where you can display all your projects, from the smallest to the most ambitious. It’s a versioning platform, which means it allows you to track changes to your code over time and revert to previous versions. Versioning is essential for collaborating on projects, backing up your code, and keeping track of your code history. The platform is built on Git, the most widely used versioning system. If you want to learn more about Git and how it works, I recommend reading my previous article, “Learning Git Through Small Projects”.
When I first published my first project on GitHub, I was nervous. I found the GitHub community to be incredibly welcoming and friendly. What’s more, GitHub is like my online portfolio. Future employers often look at GitHub profiles to see what someone has worked on and what kind of programmer they are. So why not show them what I can do?
The goal of this article is to show you how to create a GitHub profile and how to get started using it.
Creating a GitHub Profile
The first step to sharing your code and collaborating with others is creating a GitHub profile. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Go to GitHub: Open your web browser and navigate to https://github.com/.
Sign up: Click the “Sign up” button.
Enter your information:
- Email address: Enter a valid email address that you have access to.
- Password: Create a strong password.
- Username: Choose a unique username. This will be part of your GitHub profile URL (e.g.,
github.com/<username>).
Verify your account: GitHub will send a verification email to the address you provided. Open the email and click the verification link.
Complete the setup: After verifying your email, you may be asked a few questions to help GitHub customise your experience. You can usually skip these if you want to.
Customise your profile:
- Profile picture: Add a profile picture to make your profile more personal.
- Bio: Write a short description about yourself and your interests.
- Social accounts: Add links to your other online profiles (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter).
Creating Your First Repository
Now you have a GitHub profile, it’s time to create your first repository. A repository is like a folder where your project’s files are stored.
Click the “+” button in the top right corner and select “New repository”.
Give your repository a name (e.g., “my-first-project”).
Choose whether you want your repository to be public (visible to everyone) or private (visible only to you and the people you choose). Public repositories are free, private repositories have limitations for free accounts (number of collaborators).
Optionally, add a description for your repository and initialize this repository with Add a README file (this creates a README.md file that serves as an introductory documentation for the project, it is recommended that you create one), .gitignore (allows you to define files and folders that Git will not track), and choose a license (allows you to choose a license for your project).
Click “Create repository”.
What to do after creating a repository?
Using the command git clone <repository URL> clones the repository from GitHub.com to your local computer, making it easier to resolve conflicts when merging, adding, or removing files.
In GitHub, you can create files and folders for your project. Using Git commands, you can track changes, commit them, and upload them to GitHub.
When developing my C++ projects, I used a strategy of frequent commits. After implementing each piece of functionality, such as generating random numbers, I created a commit with a brief but concise description. This allowed me to have a clear history of changes and easily revert to a previous version if necessary. For example, when I implemented input handling so that the program wouldn’t crash when a non-numeric character was entered, and the new implementation caused unexpected behavior, I used the git revert <hash_commit> command to revert the changes from that commit. This created a new commit that undone the changes, preserving the complete history of the project.
Reflection
While using GitHub, I learned a couple of things. First, regular commits with concise descriptions are keys. I struggled with this at first and sometimes made few or unclear commits. This then backfired when I needed to revert to an older version or understand what I changed in a given commit. I learned from this experience and now try to write commit messages as best I can.
Next is collaboration on GitHub, even if it’s just browsing other people’s repositories and examining their code, has given me valuable insight into the work of more experienced developers. I look at how they organize their code, branch off, and solve issues that inspire me. I want to go ahead and get more into open-source projects in turns to becomes an active contributor.
Finally, GitHub has opened my eyes to the importance of code sharing and open communication within the developer community. I realized sharing my projects more assists me in learning while helping others out and building an online portfolio. It gave me a huge impetus to keep learning and developing my software engineering skills.