What is the purpose of GitHub?

GitHub is an online software development platform. It's used for storing, tracking, and collaborating on software projects.

It makes it easy for developers to share code files and collaborate with fellow developers on open-source projects. GitHub also serves as a social networking site where developers can openly network, collaborate, and pitch their work.

Since its founding in 2008, GitHub has acquired millions of users and established itself as a go-to platform for collaborative software projects. This free service comes with several helpful features for sharing code and working with others in real time.

On top of its code-related functions, GitHub encourages users to build a personal profile and brand for themselves. You can visit anyone’s profile and see what projects they own and contribute to. This makes GitHub a type of social network for programmers and fosters a collaborative approach to software and website development.

 

How does GitHub work?

GitHub users create accounts, upload files, and create coding projects. But the real work of GitHub happens when users begin to collaborate.

While anyone can code independently, teams of people build most development projects. Sometimes these teams are all in one place at once time, but more often they work asynchronously. There are many challenges to creating collaborative projects with distributed teams. GitHub makes this process much simpler in a few different ways.

First, all the code and documentation are in one place. This limits issues with access for anyone who wants to contribute to a project. Each repository also contains instructions and other details to help outline project goals and rules.

Next, coding is more creative and abstract than most non-technical people think it is. For example, say two devs are working on different pieces of code. These two pieces of code should work together. But sometimes one piece of code can make the other code fail. Or a piece of code can have an unexpected impact on how the other code works.

GitHub solves these problems by showing how both files will change the main branch. It catches these errors before pushing changes, making the coding process more efficient.

GitHub also makes it easier to track changes and go back to previous versions of a project. To explain this, we’ll need to understand the technology that GitHub is based on, Git, and talk about version control.

 

Reference: https://blog.hubspot.com/website/what-is-github-used-for