I don't use git but I'd like to. I guess I'm the target market in a sense. The key to simplifying a tutorial is removal of jargon. Just tell it like it is.
FYI: This is the line at which I closed the tab: "checkout a repository" - wtf. I don't know what a repository is and now I'm checking it out? is checkout a typo? maybe it should be check-out? either way, I have no way of knowing and confusion has set in. Unfortunately, tab is closed.
I see this pattern all the time where people use the single-word noun form as the verb. It should be "check out" in that instance.
I believe that somebody googling git usage is going to be a little bit conversant in the topic of version control.
I also have to say this:
> I believe that somebody googling git usage is going to be a little bit conversant in the topic of version control.
So you seriously believe somebody trying to learn about version control will already know about version control?
For the same reason that I believe someone googling about haskell or erlang probably knows something about programming.
I forget that this site is about startups and not specifically programmers or people with a heavy IT background.
It's my fault and I apologize.
One difference is that you can have multiple of these folders, not only on your local machine but also on remote servers.
A repository is like a slave folder to a master folder, when the master folder is updated (the github folder) the contents are automatically copied to all repositories. In this way, it saves from having to update all folders manually and keeps everything in one place, with only one thing needing changes, which then propogate automatically to where they are needed?
Any idea what version control is?
you can think of a repository as a git-aware folder of code. if you go into your My_Documents folder, type `git init`, it's now a repository. if you click New Repository on github.com, navigate back to your local My_Documents repo, type `git remote add my_github_repo git@github.com:brador/my_documents.git`, you can then push your local repo into that repo with `git push my_github_repo` from your local repo. or if someone else commits to my_github_repo, you can pull changes downstream with `git pull my_github_repo`. git will check repos against eachother for conflicts.
i don't think a "master folder" really makes sense. if you're developing an app, you generally start with that local git init repo, and then you may push it to github. but then you may delete that local repo or go to another computer and type `git clone git@githjub.com:brador/my_documents.git` and it creates a local repo that you can resume working on. i think the point of decentralized version control like git is that there doesn't need to be a master repository. you can always merge repositories into eachother.