Top 10 Reasons To Love GitHub

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To properly understand GitHub, let’s divide it into two words ‘Git’ and ‘Hub’. Git is basically a ‘Distribution Version Control’ (DVC) and ‘Source Code Management’ (SCM) system widely used by software programmers while Hub means the efficient centre of any activity. Hence, GitHub is a web based hosting service for Git repository.

GitHub is equipped with various advanced features that make it widely used and trusted by users (particularly programmers). There are a number of reasons to love GitHub, and this article gives you my top 10 reasons to love GitHub. 

1. Availability And Rights Of Modifications
GitHub is an open source platform that is easily available and can be used with any operating system. Thus, it is in the spotlight and a number of users are pleased working with it. Full permission is granted to make any changes to the public repository by the developers. The users can get recommendations on their projects and can modify them for better results.  

2. Version Control System
Since GitHub is a version control system, it allows developers to work efficiently on a long project. Any changes made in a file or particular code can be recalled using a specific version later. This in turn makes it convenient for the developers to work on lengthy projects with ease.

3. Further Development of Programs and Projects
One remarkable feature associated with GitHub is ‘Forking’. GitHub permits creation of a new project that is based on some already existing projects. If the developers wish to improve an existing project by adding a contribution, they can make necessary changes to the ‘Repository’ and publish the modified project as new repository. Moreover, if there is any update in the original repository used for creating the new project, addition of the updates into the new repository is possible with ease.

4. Social Networking
GitHub has a Social Networking feature that allows projects to grow. As in the user profile in social networking sites, GitHub offers a user profile containing your contributions to other projects along with your past work.

Users are free to discuss project revisions publicly, so a number of experts can work effectively as a team and contribute towards the advancement of the project. Before GitHub, the communication among the developers regarding a project was difficult. They used to communicate by sending emails and convince others to trust them.

5. Code Repository And Publishing Engine On Same Page
An outstanding feature of GitHub is ‘GitHub Pages’  that allows both the code repository and the publishing engine to reside on the same page. Integration of such feature rescues its clients from losing precious time in building projects and then pushing them to the repository.

6. Sustainable Workflow Improvement
GitHub provides a sustainable workflow improvement.  A number of functions like examining the commit log, reversing commits and examining files through a browser can be done in real time.

7. GitHub Gists
The latest feature added to GitHub is that developers can share their text or a piece of code publicly or can keep it private. The place where the data is shared publicly can easily be searched by search engines and can be conveniently viewed from your profile. On the other hand, when you share a text privately, you can restrict the viewers of the code. Only those persons you have granted permission to will be able to view your codes.

8. You Can Have Any Number of Private Repositories
In order to share your work with the developers, GitHub is open source. However, there can be scenarios in which you want to keep your stuff personal and not share it with the world. In such cases GitHub lets you keep any number of repositories private.  For example, if you work on some freeware projects, then definitely you will keep some of the codes personal. Using GitHub, you can easily add those codes to private repository and keep them private.

9. Redundancy Of Repository
If information is stored on your local machine then any hardware failure or issues may cause loss of data. However, GitHub immunizes users from the threat of losing important project files as the files are redundantly backed up to the cloud. Moreover, GitHub provides abundant storage permission to save the projects.

10. Cost Factor
GitHub does not demand high investment for its repository. You can choose a desired plan depending on your requirement at a cost of about $1.45 for each repository. Another reason for liking GitHub is that you can get suggestions on the repository by developers without any charges applied.
 
Conclusion
GitHub is a web based service for Git repository. GitHub is based on the basic idea to ‘build software better together’. It is being integrated with various features that help the programmers to modify their projects for better results. Owing to its various advance features, it is being trusted by programmers. The popularity of GitHub can draw from the fact that it has acquired about 9 million users worldwide.
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