What Is Git & Why Should You Use It?

Ways to Use Git

Git offers multiple access methods to accommodate different working styles and preferences. You can interact with Git through the command line interface (terminal) for maximum control and efficiency, or use a desktop application with a graphical user interface (GUI) like Sourcetree, shown below. While command-line proficiency remains essential for advanced Git operations, GUI tools provide intuitive visual representations of your repository's history and branching structure, making complex workflows more accessible to teams.

Git Repositories

A Git repository (or repo for short) serves as the comprehensive container for all project files and their complete revision history. When you initialize Git in an ordinary project folder—whether it's a website's root directory, application source code, or documentation—Git creates a hidden .git subfolder containing all the metadata necessary for version tracking, branching, and collaboration.

On Unix-based operating systems like macOS and Linux, files and folders beginning with a period (.) remain hidden by default, so the .git folder won't appear in standard file browsers unless you explicitly show hidden files. However, most modern code editors and IDEs will display this folder, and understanding its presence is crucial for repository management and troubleshooting.

Stage & Commit Files

Git's power lies in its granular approach to tracking changes. Rather than automatically saving every modification, Git requires deliberate actions to record changes through a process called committing. Each commit represents a snapshot of your project at a specific point in time, complete with a descriptive message explaining what changed and why.

Before creating a commit, you must explicitly tell Git which files to include using the add command, a process known as staging. This two-step workflow provides exceptional flexibility in professional development scenarios. Consider this common situation: you're simultaneously refactoring a complex function and fixing an unrelated bug. The refactoring isn't quite ready for production, but the bug fix needs immediate deployment. Git's staging area allows you to commit only the bug fix, maintaining clean, logical commit history while keeping your work-in-progress changes separate and safe.

Remote Repositories (on GitHub & Bitbucket)

Modern software development relies heavily on distributed collaboration, making remote repositories essential infrastructure. Platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket provide centralized hosting for your Git repositories, enabling seamless collaboration across teams, time zones, and organizations. These platforms also offer additional features like issue tracking, continuous integration, and project management tools that integrate directly with your Git workflow.

The distributed nature of Git means every developer maintains a complete local copy of the repository, including its full history. You push your local commits to the remote repository to share your work, and pull others' contributions to stay synchronized. This architecture ensures redundancy, enables offline work, and provides flexibility in how teams structure their collaboration workflows.

Branches & Merging

Git's branching system represents one of its most powerful features, enabling parallel development streams that can diverge and reconverge as needed. Branches allow you to experiment, develop features, and fix bugs without affecting the main codebase until you're ready to integrate your changes.

Consider this real-world scenario: you're developing a new user authentication system that will take several weeks to complete. Midway through development, a critical security vulnerability is discovered in production. With Git branches, you can immediately switch to the main branch (now typically called main rather than master), create a hotfix branch, implement the security patch, deploy it to production, and then seamlessly return to your authentication feature development. When your feature is complete and tested, you merge it back into the main branch, preserving both the security fix and your new feature.

Merge conflicts occur when Git cannot automatically reconcile changes from different branches—typically when multiple developers modify the same lines of code. While conflicts might seem intimidating initially, they're a normal part of collaborative development. Git provides clear markers showing conflicting changes, and modern editors offer sophisticated merge tools to help you resolve conflicts efficiently while preserving everyone's contributions.

Pull Requests

Pull requests (called merge requests on some platforms) have evolved into the cornerstone of modern code review and quality assurance processes. Rather than directly merging changes into the main branch, developers create pull requests to propose their changes, triggering a collaborative review process that typically includes automated testing, code analysis, and peer review.

In professional environments, pull requests serve multiple critical functions: they ensure code quality through peer review, facilitate knowledge sharing across team members, provide documentation of why changes were made, and create opportunities for mentoring and learning. Many organizations require multiple approvals before merging, and integrate automated testing and security scans directly into the pull request workflow.

Learn Git in Hands-on Training

Mastering Git is essential for any serious developer in 2026, as it underpins virtually every modern development workflow, from solo projects to enterprise-scale applications. While Git's concepts are straightforward, developing fluency requires hands-on practice with real-world scenarios and professional guidance.

You can build comprehensive Git expertise in our intensive course "Git Going: An Intro to Git," available both in-person in NYC and through our live online format. This practical, project-based class forms a crucial foundation in our Front-End Web Development Certificate and Full-Stack Web Development Certificate programs, as well as all of our other web development certificate programs, reflecting Git's central role in professional software development.