In this course, you’ll learn how to keep track of the different versions of your code and configuration files using a popular version control system (VCS) called Git. We'll also go through how to setup an account with a service called GitHub so that you can create your very own remote repositories to store your code and configuration.
This course is part of the Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate
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About this Course
What you will learn
Understand why version control is a fundamental tool for coding and collaboration
Install and run Git on your local machine
Use and interact with GitHub
Collaborate with others through remote repositories
Skills you will gain
- Using Git
- Version Control Systems
- Interacting with GitHub
- Reverting Changes
- Creating Pull Requests
Offered by

Google Career Certificates are part of Grow with Google, an initiative that draws on Google's 20-year history of building products, platforms, and services that help people and businesses grow. Through programs like these, we aim to help everyone– those who make up the workforce of today and the students who will drive the workforce of tomorrow – access the best of Google’s training and tools to grow their skills, careers, and businesses.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Introduction to Version Control
In this module, you'll be introduced to the concept of version control, which will make managing and rolling back your code look super easy. You’ll learn how to differentiate between files and the tools at your disposal to make this happen. Next, you'll be introduced to Git and how you can leverage that platform to improve your coding abilities. Once you’ve got a grasp on what Git is, you’ll install it and start using it to create and clone code repositories. Last up, you’ll deep dive into Git in order to get more familiar with the different tools and commands it has to offer.
Using Git Locally
In this module, you’ll dive into advanced Git interactions by skipping the staging area for small code changes, and understand how Git uses the HEAD alias to represent checked-out snapshots. Next, you’ll explore how to move and remove files before finally getting a cheat sheet to help you in your Git explorations! The next step of your learning will include how to undo changes before committing and how to amend commits once they’re submitted. Finally, you’ll be able to identify errors in commits that were submitted a while back. In the final section of this module, you’ll explore the concept of branching and merging. You’ll learn what a branch is, how to create one, and how they work in harmony with you and your code. Once you’re comfortable with branching, you’ll dive into merging, how it works with branched data, and how to deal with merge conflicts.
Working with Remotes
In this module, you’ll be introduced to GitHub and learn how it works with Git. You’ll create new repositories and clone those repositories onto your computer. Next, we’ll explain what a remote repository is, how we can work with them, and how we can host them. You’ll get familiar with commands like modify, stage, and commit, which will be used for local changes, as well as the fetch command, which can pull any changes from remote repositories. Our final lesson will focus on learning about conflicts. This will allow you to explore the concepts of pull-merge-push workflows, pushing remote branches and rebasing your changes.
Collaboration
In this module, you’ll continue to explore the collaboration tools available in Git. You’ll learn about the tools that are available to help improve the quality of your code and to better track your code. This includes an overview of pull requests and how the typical workflow of a pull request looks like on GitHub. Next, you’ll dive into how you can squash changes in your code. We’ll finish up by providing you with a cheat sheet on fork and pull requests. Next up, we’ll cover what code reviews are and what the code review workflow looks like. Then, you’ll learn about how to use code reviews on GitHub. The final lesson of this module will focus on managing projects. We’ll take a rundown of best practices on managing projects and how to manage collaboration within those projects. We’ll explore different ways of tracking issues and finish up by discussing the concept of continuous integration with your projects.
Reviews
- 5 stars82.70%
- 4 stars14.74%
- 3 stars1.71%
- 2 stars0.40%
- 1 star0.43%
TOP REVIEWS FROM INTRODUCTION TO GIT AND GITHUB
Need some more demonstration with practical. But overall its really awesome course. I learned a lot of things about git, github, vcs etc. Thanks google and coursera for such a wonderful course.
This course is full of priceless information, but at the same time to the point. I reckon I will come back to the videos as I encounter new challenges particularly when collaborating with a team.
Even though it's an introductory course and everyone must get deeper into those topics, this course is very complete and provides you all the necessary to work with git in a real IT enviroment.
Very nice course I liked usage of quiklabs. :) Although as the last test do not have grading inside of the quicklab its a bit weird to not know whether you have passed before you submit.
About the Google IT Automation with Python Professional Certificate
This beginner-level, six-course certificate, developed by Google, is designed to provide IT professionals with in-demand skills -- including Python, Git, and IT automation -- that can help you advance your career.

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