eads/about-git

About Git

Setup everyone on github

Introduction

Ryan and David

The problem

Talk about the problem of writing and editing in groups, prompt crowd for questions

• Collaborative online editors (revisions, comments): Google docs (revisions, comments), Hackpad, ...

• Cloud file storage: Dropbox (file revisions), Spideroak, ...

• Word processor: MS Office, LibreOffice "changes". (Yuck!)

• Content management systems: Drupal, Wordpress, ...

• Enterprise web suites: Sharepoint, Confluence, Alfresco.

• Source code control / version control: Git (and mercurial, bazaar, subversion...)

• Version control is everywhere!

Talk about other features we want in our writing and editing software

• multiple actors working on the same stuff
• change history
• nothing lost (don't need a bunch of backup copies)
• associating changes with their authors

Geeks have actually solved these problems really well. But we're still figuring out how to make it easy and accessible.

These are very similar problems to what writers reporters deal with, at a different scale

Writing an application is like writing a big book. But if you mess up any spelling or grammar, the book won't print. People can handle minor mistakes, computers are not so smart.

Examples of software that solves some of the problems

Talk about more problems that developers have, especially in open source. The genesis of git && the development of Linux. (distributed source control)

Talk about git, features, goals

(aside) talk about text files

Github is git, but git is not github Github is to git as Facebook is to jpeg photos

So... Let's use github for something useful... Prose.io!

Goals

• Understanding the difference between git and github
• Understand what git is, what it's used for
• Be able to talk to developers about source control, understand when source control is needed
• Learn about technologies that could help you in your work