How can I find someone to explain, say, Git to a non-technical person | Hacker News Reader

How can I find someone to explain, say, Git to a non-technical person

17 pointstcsi20 comments

Suppose the following is true about me: * smart * success and experience in a sector ripe for disruption * has an idea for how to do it * studying DL/ML/etc. algorithms in depth so when I pitch, I'm substantive * trying to avoid getting bogged down in learning, say, Git; but also not looking to skip it entirely b/c it's good to know what the practical issues are * willing to pay someone actually smart to walk me through such stuff and make it go fast * (note - obviously there are endless tutorials etc.; I'm specifically looking for a human)

Where do I find that person? What am I paying them?

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Its a computer program that shows the current version of text in a file compared to the changes in the past in the same file.

How complex do you want to go is always the question? What is a screwdriver? Its a tool that turns screws. What's a scew? A piece of metal that connects two thingsgs. OK I got one but its not turning? Oh yeah their are different screw types. .... And on and on for any seemingly simple subject.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git

You can hire a consultant to explain Git to you. Depending on where that consultant is in the world and their career, their hourly rate could vary a great deal. The hard part will be figuring if they actually know Git well enough to teach you about it.

What you need to know to use Git is variable and depends on what you want to do and how many people you want to collaborate with.

To me the situation you are setting up doesn't hang together well. Git isn't magic and if you are studying DL/ML/etc. Algorithms to understand them well enough to use them and write code or design an application with them, Git isn't hard to learn. Sure, Git can have deep details and capabilities but you don't need that to use them.

I would suggest you purchase a GitHub account or similar service and just start using Git. Get a paid account so that you have more control of the repo. Read the user agreement to make sure you agree with it. Setting up your own Git server usually isn't worth it.

I would start with ChatGPT. “Explain the git file versioning software for 5 year olds” and start from there.

And then what happens when ChatGPT produces an explanation that's clear, well-structured, logical, and completely wrong? This is plain bad advice.

Combine it with an individual that is eager to learn and willing to treat ChatGPT as unreliable, and it stops being such bad advice.

Just like when one is hiring consultants. Don’t lie to yourself about the situation and there are cases where it can be useful. Treat it like a magic, expensive bullet that will somehow save time and money, and, well, you’ll put your eye out.

Git is a tool that helps people keep track of changes to files, especially when working on a team. Here's how it works:

1. Imagine you have a folder with some important documents in it. You can think of the folder as a "repository" in git.

2. When you make a change to one of the documents, git helps you keep a record of that change. It does this by creating a "commit," which is like a snapshot of all the files in the repository at that moment in time.

3. Each commit has a special message that explains what changed in the files. For example, you might write a commit message like "added a new paragraph to the report" or "fixed a typo in the spreadsheet."

4. You can have many different commits in a repository, and they all form a timeline of changes. This is called the "history" of the repository.

5. If you ever need to go back to an earlier version of the repository, you can use git to find the commit you want and restore the files to that version.

Which part of this is "completely wrong?"

If you do a foolish thing and get lucky it was still a foolish thing.

It's not too different from recommending wikipedia or google searches.

I built a side project recently to help with this. It searches Google, then feeds the relevant results from the pages into GPT-3 to get a summary. It seems to be accurate so far in my testing - https://github.com/VikParuchuri/researcher .

A few years back before Covid, I held biweekly open meetings for anyone to learn practical Git basics where I work. I had about 20 people come through (PhD's, Statisticians, etc.) Let's talk! My email is in my profile.

I can't imagine that the time, cost and trouble it is to find a consultant to teach you git would be more than just going on line and reading up on it. There are a gazillion sites that explain enough of it very well.

OK, so let's ignore all the replies about how there are many useful Git tutorials online, or all the Git-specific advice.

You say that you're only using Git as an example of something you'd like to learn. Are all these concepts that you'd like to learn technical/software related? If so, CodeMentor may be what you're looking for.

In a more general sense, it's a very interesting problem. How do you find personalized technical help online, with some assurance that the person helping you is actually competent in the field?

You aren’t asking to be taught “key use cases” for git. That’s possible without getting bogged down. One of those countless tutorials can actually teach you that.

You’re asking for someone to care why you want to learn it, and tailor the instruction to you. To think about all the possibilities for you, and filter them down to a short list. To save you some time, or some effort. Hopefully both.

Consultants will cater to that style of interaction, and it will cost a lot. “A lot” is relative to the location of the consultant.

Just use TortoiseGit https://tortoisegit.org/ (or Git Cola https://git-cola.github.io/ for Linux).

You can do 90% of the stuff with them. When you have an strange case use the command line.

There are countless articles if you search for “git for non-developers” on google. You want to learn something but aren’t willing to spend 30 minutes of your time to do some studying? You’d be paying someone to regurgitate the same info and analogies from these articles.

Just ask here and we'll answer for free, while being intrinsically motivated to give you a high quality answer.

What about Git do you want to know?

If it’s an option, learn Mercurial, Fossil or Sapling instead of Git. They have sane UIs unlike Git.

Git is not an UI. There are plenty of user friendly UIs for Git. I personally use TortoiseGit because they have the same interface for SVN (TortoiseSVN) and I got used to that, and that makes me proficient.

Thanks very much for the responses, many of which were helpful.

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