KevsRobots Learning Platform
Overview
Getting Started
Saving Your Work
Branches
Working with GitHub
Putting It All Together
Course Overview
What you'll learn in Git for Beginners
By , Minute
Overview
Welcome to Git for Beginners! Have you ever broken a robot’s code that was working perfectly five minutes ago, and couldn’t remember what you changed? Or ended up with a folder full of files called robot.py, robot_v2.py, robot_final.py and robot_final_REALLY.py?
Git fixes all of that. It’s a tool that takes snapshots of your project every time you ask it to, so you can see exactly what changed, go back to any earlier version, try out ideas safely, and share your work with other people. It’s used by almost every software team on the planet, and it’s just as useful for a one-person MicroPython robot project.
This course starts from zero. You don’t need to know anything about Git, GitHub or the command line beyond typing a command and pressing Enter.
Course Content
| Module | Title | What you’ll learn |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is Git? | Version control, snapshots, repositories, and how Git differs from GitHub |
| 2 | Installing Git | Installing Git on Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi, and telling it who you are |
| 3 | Your First Repository | Creating a repository with git init and checking it with git status |
| 4 | Staging and Committing | The three areas of Git, git add, git commit, and writing good commit messages |
| 5 | Viewing History | git log, git show and git diff |
| 6 | Undoing Changes | Throwing away edits, unstaging, fixing the last commit and reverting |
| 7 | Ignoring Files | Keeping junk and secrets out of your repository with .gitignore |
| 8 | Branches | Trying out ideas safely on a branch |
| 9 | Merging and Conflicts | Bringing branches together, and fixing merge conflicts |
| 10 | GitHub and Remotes | Putting your project on GitHub with git push, and git clone |
| 11 | Pulling and Collaborating | git fetch, git pull, and how pull requests work |
| 12 | Project: Version Control a Robot | Using everything you’ve learned on a real MicroPython robot project |
| 13 | Cheat Sheet and Next Steps | Every command from the course on one page |
Key Results
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- Install and set up Git on your computer or Raspberry Pi
- Track a project with Git and save meaningful snapshots (commits)
- Look back through your project’s history and see what changed
- Undo mistakes without panicking
- Use branches to try out new features without breaking working code
- Merge branches and fix merge conflicts
- Publish your projects on GitHub and keep them in sync across computers
What you’ll need
- A computer running Windows, macOS or Linux, or a Raspberry Pi
- A text editor such as VS Code or Thonny
- A free GitHub account (for modules 10 to 12)
Prerequisites
None! If you’ve never used a terminal before, don’t worry. Every command is shown in full, along with what you should see when you run it. If you’d like a gentle introduction to the command line first, take Introduction to Linux.
How the course works
Each module introduces one new idea, shows you the commands, and explains what they do. Commands you type into a terminal look like this:
git status
What Git prints back looks like this:
On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean
Most modules end with a Try it yourself exercise, a Common issues section for when things go wrong, and a short quiz. Your quiz score and progress are saved in your browser and shown in the sidebar.
We’ll build up a small robot project as we go, so by the end you’ll have a real repository on GitHub with a proper history.
Let’s get started!
You can use the arrows ← → on your keyboard to navigate between lessons.
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