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Git is the world's most widely used version control system — a tool that tracks changes to files over time and allows multiple people to collaborate on the same codebase without overwriting each other's work. Whether you're a solo developer or working on a team of hundreds, Git is an essential part of every modern software workflow.
Before version control, developers saved files like project_v1.js, project_v2_final.js, and project_final_REAL.js. This approach is error-prone, wastes space, and makes collaboration nearly impossible. If something broke, you had no reliable way to see exactly what changed or roll back safely.
Git solves all of these problems by maintaining a complete history of every change ever made to a project.
Version control is a system that records changes to files over time so you can:
Unlike older centralised systems (such as SVN), Git is distributed. Every developer has a full copy of the repository — including the complete history — on their own machine. You can commit, branch, and merge entirely offline. The remote server (such as GitHub) is simply a shared synchronisation point, not a single source of truth.
Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 to manage the Linux kernel source code. The Linux project had thousands of contributors and needed a fast, reliable, distributed system. Git was designed with speed and data integrity as core requirements, and those principles still define it today.
# Git is everywhere
git --version
Git is used by virtually every professional software team on the planet. It underpins platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Job postings for developers almost universally list Git as a required skill. Knowing Git means you can contribute to open-source projects, collaborate on team codebases, and manage your own projects with confidence.
By the end of this course you will be able to:
Git has a reputation for being intimidating, but its core workflow is straightforward. Let's build that foundation step by step.