Git & GitHub Pro Series
Git and GitHub practices for branches, pull requests, rebase, history repair, and team review.
5 chapters · about 135 min end to end
- How Git Actually Works — Commits, Branches, and the Three TreesStop memorising git commands and build the mental model instead. Git is not a backup tool — it's a graph of snapshots. This chapter explains what a commit really is (a snapshot + a SHA + a parent pointer), why that makes history a DAG instead of a line, what HEAD and branches actually are (just movable labels), the 'three trees' that `add` and `commit` move files between, and what push/pull/fetch do to sync your local graph with GitHub. Once you see the model, every other git command — including rebase and squash — stops being scary.Beginner · 26 min
- Merge, Rebase, or Squash? Branches and Rewriting HistoryThe question every team argues about, finally explained with pictures. What a feature branch is, the difference between a fast-forward and a real merge commit (and what `--no-ff` does), what rebase actually does to your commits (and the one golden rule that keeps it safe), what squash-merge does (and why it produces those tidy 'PR #N' commits on your repo), how to survive a merge conflict without panic, and a clear table of when to reach for each. Built directly on the graph model from Chapter 1.Beginner · 30 min
- GitHub Like a Pro — Issues, Branch Protection, Releases & the gh CLIGit is the tool; GitHub is the platform on top of it. This chapter covers the pro features that turn a pile of commits into a coordinated project: the real difference between git and GitHub, issues with labels and milestones, linking PRs to issues so they auto-close, branch protection rules (why nobody can push to main directly), required status checks, CODEOWNERS, tags vs GitHub Releases and semantic versioning, the fork-and-PR flow for contributing to other people's projects, and the gh command-line tool that does it all from your terminal.Beginner · 28 min
- Undo Anything in Git — reset, revert, restore, stash, reflog & cherry-pickThe chapter everyone wishes they'd read first. Git almost never truly loses your work — there's a clean recovery for every mistake. A scenario-by-scenario playbook: unstage a file, discard edits, fix the last commit message, undo a commit but keep the changes, the three modes of reset (soft/mixed/hard) and which of the three trees each touches, revert vs reset (and which is safe for pushed history), cherry-pick a single commit, stash work-in-progress, and reflog — the time machine that recovers commits you thought were gone forever.Beginner · 26 min
- GitHub Free vs Paid — Premium Features, Usage-Based Billing & What's Actually Worth ItYou've used GitHub free this whole series — so what does paying actually get you, and is it worth it? A clear map of the two ways GitHub charges (flat per-seat plans vs pay-as-you-go meters), what each plan tier (Free / Pro / Team / Enterprise) really unlocks, an honest worth-it verdict for each, how GitHub Copilot's tiers work and what its June 2026 shift to usage-based AI-credit billing means, what the usage meters (Actions, Codespaces, Git LFS, Packages) cost and when they're worth it, how to set a spending limit so nothing surprises you, and a decision table for what a developer in your situation actually needs to pay for.Beginner · 25 min