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START HERE — Git & GitHub: Zero to Independent

This repository is the course. Your practice should happen in a separate throwaway learning repository so you can experiment, break things, recover them, and build real Git history without modifying the curriculum itself.

1. What you are learning

  • Git = version control on your computer. It records project history as commits.
  • GitHub = a hosting and collaboration platform for Git repositories.

The goal is not memorizing commands. The goal is becoming able to inspect a repository, make changes safely, recover from mistakes, collaborate through branches and pull requests, and understand what Git is doing.

2. Create your student lab first

Before Lesson 1, create a folder/repository named something like:

git-github-lab/
├── notes/
├── experiments/
└── README.md

All practice, deliberate mistakes, lesson logs, branches, conflicts, resets, and recovery exercises happen there.

Do not use this course repository as your practice playground. Treat this repo as read-only curriculum.

See STUDENT_LAB.md for the exact setup.

3. How the course works

Use this loop:

LEARN → PREDICT → DO → INSPECT → BREAK/RECOVER → EXPLAIN → PROVE

For each module:

  1. work through the module guide in your student lab,
  2. complete the module's Exercises/README.md challenges,
  3. complete the matching cumulative gate in ASSESSMENTS.md,
  4. advance only when you can do the required work without copying a recipe.

When a task contains a destructive or history-rewriting command, first read SAFETY.md.

4. Course order

  1. Module 0 — Setup: Git vs GitHub, installation, identity, first repository
  2. Module 1 — Daily Core: status, diff, staging, commits, history, ignore rules
  3. Module 2 — Branching: branches, switching, merging, branch inspection
  4. Module 3 — Remotes: clone, push, fetch, pull, upstream tracking, divergence
  5. Module 4 — Collaboration: forks, pull requests, review, issues, contribution etiquette
  6. Module 5 — Recovery: restore, stash, amend, revert, reset, reflog
  7. Module 6 — Real World: conflicts, rebase, tags/releases, controlled GitHub Actions lab
  8. Final Capstone: complete a real contribution workflow and demonstrate recovery skills

5. What to do with the lesson logs

The Logs/ files in this curriculum are templates/reference worksheets. Copy the relevant log into your own git-github-lab/notes/ folder and fill it out there.

Do not edit the public curriculum merely to tick boxes.

6. The safety rule

Before any command that can discard or rewrite work:

git status
git diff
git log --oneline --decorate -10

Then ask:

Is the work committed? Is it pushed/shared? Am I intentionally rewriting or deleting anything?

If you cannot answer those questions, stop and inspect before continuing.

7. The mastery rule

You are ready to move on when you can:

  • predict what a command will change,
  • run it,
  • inspect whether your prediction was correct,
  • explain the result,
  • recover if you deliberately create a failure,
  • pass the module challenge and cumulative gate without command-by-command copying.

Finishing pages is not mastery.

Start now

  1. Open STUDENT_LAB.md.
  2. Create your separate practice repo.
  3. Then begin Module 0.

If you get lost later, return to this sentence:

Read the lesson. Work in the lab. Inspect constantly. Complete the challenge. Prove the gate.