Stage 2 of 6 · 8 lessons · ~4 weeks

Command line and Git

Get comfortable in the terminal and put every piece of code under version control. This is the tooling every team assumes on day one, and it protects your own work from now on.

Start: Navigating files in the shell

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Start with· follow one of these

CourseFree
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
MIT · Beginner
MIT lectures on dev tools; the shell, shell tools and version control lectures are enough
GitHub repoFree
GitHub Skills: Introduction to GitHub
GitHub · Beginner
Free one-hour exercise: branch, commit, open and merge a pull request

Practise

Learn Git Branching
Draws the commit graph as you type, so merge and rebase stop being a mystery
OverTheWire: Bandit
Levels 0 to 15 build real shell reflexes: finding files, reading them, permissions

Keep handy

Pro Git
Free official book: read chapters 1 to 3, keep the rest for later
Oh Shit, Git!?!
Recovery recipes for the day a commit goes wrong

Also worth your time

How to Write a Git Commit MessageRead
Seven rules for commit messages that still make sense to a reviewer a year later

Before moving on: Put every program you have written in a GitHub repository with meaningful commit messages, and open, review and merge one pull request from a feature branch.

Tauseef's advice

Learn about a dozen commands well (status, add, diff, commit, log, branch, stash, fetch, pull, push, clone, remote -v) and use them every day; rebase, hooks and submodules can wait. Commit small, with messages that say why, because that history is what a reviewer reads first.