Personal Opinion about Getting GIT video series by JMac (Updated)

 Introduction 

I've never been a good Versioning System user. That's a fact!

I barely used it when it was SVN and now with GIT and the whole distributed part of it... Well I'm kinda lost.

Enter Getting Git: "A comprehensive video series from git init to Git Master".

When this endeavour, by Jason "JMac" McCreary @gonedark, hit my attention, I immediately followed that link and had a look at it:

JMac was going to release a series of videos about how to get along with the whole GIT thing. He already had the first 2 sections of it released and was in the middle of doing the following one. He was asking $29 USD for it.

My immediate reaction was: YES and yes...

The first yes was for the fact that someone was taking the initiative to do one of these. The second yes was in total agreement with such a low price.

Impressions

First of all I have to apologise to JMac. He sent me a mail asking for some feedback and I didn't reply right away. Being a person that suffers from clinical depression, you know for a fact that you have to be at your fullest when you want to learn something. So this is some sorts of an apology and the mentioned reply.

When I finally was in a state I could fully absorb and retain the content of the video series, I devoured them with much eagerness.

JMac's voice is soothing and there are no hummms and ahhss! He delivers a continuous narrative that is pleasant, as much as it's informative.

My first gripe was due to the fact that the videos were a bit too small and there were so many. But then I realised that this, is not only something that you want to watch once, but, is a resource that you want to come back as many times as needed to fully master GIT.

I watched them in the sequence JMac put them.

Since he has, both, an init and a master version for each command, you can choose to first watch all the init ones and then the master ones. Or like me, watch everything in the init, immediately followed by the master. Or, like JMac puts it: Choose your own adventure.

Mobile devices

While watching the video series, there was a question floating in my mind: Why can't I download the videos so I can watch them offline or on my Nexus 5 tablet?

I, then, went on my tablet and had a go at the site. I was pleasantly surprised that the website did perform quite well and had a very good appearance and good user experience on my Nexus 5 tablet.

My only gripe is with the video viewer from vimeo. My big fat fingers were a bit of a nuisance to get the video to go full screen. But no blame on JMac, here.

I still want to know if JMac is going to release the videos in a downloadable format. Guess I'll have to email him with this question...

Command line prompt envy

While you're watching the videos you can't refrain to get a bit envious of JMac's command line prompt, that displays the current info about the repository you're in.

In light of that, I went and Googled for something I could use on my Ubuntu x64 16.10.

I've found many, but I'm going to list two:

1. This one is quite simple and light weight: https://github.com/jimeh/git-aware-prompt.
2. This one is a bit more elaborate and has many prompt bling: https://github.com/magicmonty/bash-git-prompt.

Both play well with my Ubuntu installation and the second one even has themes specifically tailored for Ubuntu.

Conclusion

I would, and most definitely will, recommend this video series to any newcomer to the GIT and GitHub ecosystem!

At the moment of this being posted (Mon, 20 Feb 2017), JMac still has a 4^th section entitled Everyday Git to be posted. He mentions it quite a lot in the series. From my gathering, this will contain tips and tricks, command line prompt pimping and other goodies.

I will revisit this topic in the immediate future and report more on the subject.

So expect some updates to this post.

Update: 2017/02/20 20:50

JMac as confirmed that the next video on the Everyday Git will be dedicated to improving your Git prompt.