Your first months using GitHub

[melipass]

Hi y'all, seeing GitHub's history on the keynote right now made me curious about what your first experience using GitHub was like.

When was it? What was your favorite feature back then? How did it help with your projects or collaborations? Please share anything you believe is interesting 😊

[sofiatwins]

Increíble escuchar Universe en español!

[CamiloGarciaLaRotta]

I started using GitHub back in my college days. I must admit it was all about the contribution graph back then for me. It was less about commit quality and more about quantity. Having a green contribution graphs earned you street points 😁

I remember really enjoying the force push message in PRs to see who in our student team messed up our project's branch 😂

[beutlich]

There's nothing wrong with force-pushed branches (for open PRs) - assuming it's done correctly. It is the only way when rebasing them.

[CamiloGarciaLaRotta]

Agreed @beutlich 🙂

This was more in the context of force pushing without telling other students in the group, which leads to confusion and broken builds right before a midnight project deadline 😭

[Animesh-Ghosh]

Relatable: 😆

[blackgirlbytes]

I started using GitHub in 2018 when I joined a bootcamp called Resilient Coders. At first, I was confused about how to use GitHub. When I would make a mistake, I would just open a new repo and close the one that had a mistake. I didn't realize I could just create another commit or revert the commit 😂 . Like @CamiloGarciaLaRotta, I was determined to have a green contribution graph. I wanted to show my teacher that I was taking GitHub seriously. I just enjoyed GitHub because it gave me a chance to read other people's code and see how I could make my code better.

Over time, after I got my first couple jobs as a Software Engineer, I learned a ton from my coworkers about resolve merge conflicts, rebasing, git bisect, and GitHub Actions. Apparently, I felt so comfortable that I applied to work at GitHub and now I'm here. 😂

[goatintheshell]

The first time I used GitHub it was through a guide to learn Ruby. While I don't remember a lot about Ruby, I have been addicted to GitHub ever since.

[stephaniegiang]

I started using GitHub in college too. I didn't really understand what GitHub or Git was, so I really just used it as a place to store my assignments in the case my computer died and couldn't be revived. It wasn't until we had group assignments at school that I finally understood why people use Git and GitHub. I love the idea of having issues and breaking down the assignment into smaller parts. Made sure I didn't miss anything. That was probably my favorite feature back then.

[lee-dohm]

I started using GitHub in September of 2011. At first, I was just playing around with it to learn git. I'd been a software developer for many years already and was quite comfortable with other types of version control but this git thing was getting popular so I figured I'd better learn about it.

But it wasn't long until I started getting involved in some open source things on GitHub. I opened my first issue almost ten years ago now ... a couple months after creating my GitHub account. It was a little longer before I had my first accepted open source PR. As you can probably tell, the social aspects of GitHub are what was most exciting and useful for me. Being able to collaborate on so many things, in so many different fields of endeavor, with others from around the world, all using the same tools has been a truly transformative experience for me.

[AndreaGriffiths11]

Such a great question! We have to ask the community https://twitter.com/GitHubCommunity/status/1453440681482018826?s=20

[beutlich]

When facing GitHub first time I stumpled upon the term Pull Request which I could not grasp initially because it was me who was Pushing the changes to the branches. So I felt it should be named Push Request. Well, learned a lot since then...

[arpanaditya]

I started using GitHub in November 2020 where I had no idea about open source, communities, GitHub, and git. Then after that, there's no turning back for me. I've been learning GitHub and trying to implement new GitHub features in my project. Still learning and trying things.
when I was a beginner I was confused between staging area, commit, and push. It took me a day to understand this concept thoroughly. But it is fun using GitHub

[gautamkrishnar]

Started using GitHub back when I was at college. Rest is history. Winning Github India Open source Grants to being on GitHub trending page several times. GitHub had definitely changed my life. The first project big project I ever contributed was to DuckDuckGo. Due to my extensive contributions, I was promoted as a maintainer and a community leader.

The best feature I really liked about Github is discussions and comments. it allows developers to collaborate effectively. Instead of just focusing on code, Github focuses on creating a community around it.

[JosephAni]

Github got to be fun for me when I decided to use the platform instead of github/desktop 😅. Now amazed how far I've been able to push through and still learning as I gain value from it.

[aminoxix]

Not even a year completed, I got a lot of opportunities through GitHub & contributed to multiple Open Source Software (OSS).
Proudly being a reputed member of some Open source communities such as @layer5io, @meshery (project), recently I authored, maintaining & contributing to @devstrons powered by @hackclub.

Love to engage more in it!
Thanks! 🙂