To be honest, I used to imagine coding as a very isolating experience. I don't mean that in a negative way, but the first week's coursework really hammered home that it is a collaborative effort. Doesn't matter if you're plugging away at your job or combing some open source project in your spare time. The whole thing is very communal.
Early into the curriculum, we were introduced to the concept of version control, in which changes to code are tracked throughout the editing process. This enables developers to revisit earlier iterations of code and identify where bugs may have been introduced. It's beneficial when you're working on a project with a team, allowing other members to see updates made by their peers. These updates are usually made locally and then pushed to a copy of the master for review. After the updates are signed off on by quality assurance, they are pushed to the master, and, rather than having files denoting multiple versions of the code, you just have one master with an update history.
In the context of Dev Bootcamp, we use git and GitHub for version control. Git allows us to track changes to code we make locally on a computer by committing updates. It's sort of like adding save points over the course of making edits, and, in the event you need to, you can revisit those save points. After you commit updates, you can push updates back to the repository in GitHub. In order to do that, though, you have to setup remotes, which essentially direct git where the updates need to be pushed. GitHub is an ideal place to store code, because it's a remote location from which collaborating users can pull the same code and push back necessary updates. I had this whole push and pull of the tide joke that would have been super lame, but GitHub is a great way for users to simultaneously work on different aspects of code and centralize the updates for all users.
So far everything has been really exciting and new and different, and I'm happy to be a part of Dev Bootcamp. I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't find a good way to reference Janet Jackson's or Big Sean's "Control" throughout this entire post, but I'd like to think both approach their careers with version control.
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