Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

by mhartl • 10 years ago

416 102 10 years ago

mhartl21• 10 years ago

I linked to the free online version because that feels like the more HN thing to do, but there's also an announcement post that includes a 15% launch discount on ebook sales:

http://news.railstutorial.org/learn-enough-git-ebooks/

I'll plan to be around for a bit this afternoon in case anyone has any questions. I've already gotten a lot of great feedback on Learn Enough™ Git to Be Dangerous, so thanks for all the support!

sytse2• 10 years ago

Looks awesome! Thanks so much for making this.

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks! By the way, in the collaboration section I wanted to tell people about the option to host their own repos, so of course I put in a link to GitLab:

http://www.learnenough.com/git-tutorial#sec-collaborating

skizm• 10 years ago

Wait... The phrase "Learn Enough" is trademarked? Wtf?

tdb7893• 10 years ago

They probably use it for all their books. It would be like "for Dummies" being trademarked, which I feel is pretty reasonable

petercooper2• 10 years ago

I've often checked things in USPTO's search system (TESS) to see if they're trademarked before I use them, and this isn't coming up for me. Anyone got any insight(?), as if it is trademarked, all my other searches over the years have been similarly inaccurate and pointless :-D

wmboy• 10 years ago

™ stands for Trademark Pending

® stands for Registered Trademark

Absolutely anyone can create a term and put ™ after it (even if they never actually go through with the actual registration process).

Terr_• 10 years ago

Sure. In an ideal-sane-world, it just means they're calling "dibs" on using it as a motto or tagline for instructional material.

ajmurmann• 10 years ago

Even if they have the trademark it's reasonable. You just can't use it for a product that might be confused with theirs by a reasonable person. Do you can still make ice cream called that way or probably even name your next novel like that. Just no tutorials on the tech area.

beau26• 10 years ago

The presentation of this ebook is incredible. Really nicely done. I assume it's custom? :D

Anjin3• 10 years ago

Thanks! (I did all the UI)

It is all custom, and the Learn Enough series is using a variation on our web book layout that we created for the parent platform http://www.softcover.io - which is what is hosting the Rails Tutorial.

Riod3• 10 years ago

Awesome! I've recommended your ruby tutorial to lots of newbies. Hands down the best out there. Looks like this is another high quality product.

Tamle1012• 10 years ago

Do you happen to know/recommend a Python book written in a similar style?

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks! Glad to hear it. :-)

VeilEm• 10 years ago

Did they pay Randall Munroe to use his comics? Just curious.

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Randall is pretty chill about people using xkcd strips as long as you aren't selling them commercially:

https://xkcd.com/license.html

I do offer ebook sales, but of course I'm not selling the individual strips themselves, and the online version is free. Still, your comment has made me realize it's probably a good idea to double-check, so I'll probably drop Randall a line just to make sure.

Razengan• 10 years ago

Thank you so much for writing these. I already owe a lot to your Rails Tutorial. Any plans to make these available on the iBookstore?

tvararu• 10 years ago

I actually learned enough git to be dangerous by reading "Learn Rails by Example." And some TDD, and some Heroku, and some Bootstrap, all as side-effects from the main dish. Quite an eye-opener.

Thank you for all your work!

kiddz• 10 years ago

Why didn't you do a corresponding screencast?

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Oh, that's definitely planned. :-) Even better, my Learn Enough to Be Dangerous cofounders and I are working on a subscription service that will integrate text and videos for the command line, text editor, and Git tutorials, with many more to come (including the upcoming 4th edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial). See http://learnenough.com/ to get some idea of what we've got in store.

BWStearns3• 10 years ago

I really like this series because of the focus on developing technical sophistication as opposed to a narrow set of boxes to check. I've shared the enough command line to be dangerous with a friend who has flirted with the technical and I think it helped him develop the meta skill of technical sophistication more than any specific command line skill. It's a greater achievement than him knowing the all the flags for tar, because who does?

In any case, looking forward to reading through it and thanks for putting these out there!

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks! Developing the theme of technical sophistication has been one of the most surprising and gratifying side-effects of making tutorials designed for complete beginners. I'm hoping to continue the theme in each subsequent Learn Enough tutorial, and I'm thinking of adding it to the next edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial as well.

BWStearns3• 10 years ago

Please do! It really struck me as a theme that I hope grows beyond a Hartl-only concept. It succinctly describes a previously unnamed concept. It's the thing that you want to impart when you get that exasperated feeling trying to explain over the phone to a non-technical friend/relative how to go about fixing something that you yourself don't explicitly know how to fix but could easily if you were sitting at their computer.

More broadly have you though about a generic way to achieve/impart technical sophistication intentionally other than as a side effect of getting scraped knees doing technical things?

frozenport• 10 years ago

git push --force?

mhartl21• 10 years ago

The `git push --force` command didn't quite make the cut, but if you can think of a place where it fits into the current tutorial I'm certainly open to adding it. Maybe it fits in as an exercise somewhere?

UPDATE: yebyen has suggested this was a meant as a joke. If so—good one!

UPDATE 2: I don't mean to imply that force-pushing isn't useful! As several commenters below have noted, it most certainly is. But it's also most certainly dangerous.

yebyen• 10 years ago

I think that was supposed to be a joke. Enough git to be dangerous... what about some dangerous git command which potentially destroys some important history... [stopgirl.gif]

Your books are great, I've been buying Learn Enough to be Dangerous preorders for topics I already know well because I learned so much from the Rails Tutorial dot-org. Thanks!

mmanfrin2• 10 years ago

I've seen `git push -f` used quite a bit over my career. Maybe it's bad practice, but it's useful for:

1. Organizations that want single-commit branches (e.g., where there's a lot of cherry picking going on in a git-flow style to get certain features pushed out) but you also want to keep 'savepoint' commits while developing. Squashing a bunch of commits requires a -f if you've already pushed.

2. Rebasing a branch (without making a bubble merge).

3. For truly small quick fixes you notice when you've just pushed to CI (like you left in a debug or a focus on some tests).

yawaramin• 10 years ago

git push --force-with-lease

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TKD0MW...

dnate• 10 years ago

certainly one of the more dangerous git commands

brianwawok4• 10 years ago

Many (most) people disable -force on key branches, if not they should!

wodenokoto• 10 years ago

I've been looking forward to this one. Learn enough command line to be dangerous is the best beginners guide to bash I've seen and it really made me a lot more comfortable working with cli programs.

sharkjacobs• 10 years ago

I just skimmed the first section of Learn Enough Command Line and discovered you can hold option to use the mouse to insert the cursor in the middle of a line.

I thought I knew how to use cli but now I feel like I need to go through this whole tutorial to see what other incredibly obvious things I've been missing.

collyw2• 10 years ago

I would say thats a Unix specific thing more than CLI. It will work on Linux web browsers. Unfortunately three button trackpads seem to be disappearing.

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks! As the first title in the Learn Enough sequence, Learn Enough™ Command Line to Be Dangerous was especially challenging to write, because it literally assumes no prerequisites other than general computer knowledge (not even a text editor). So glad to hear you liked it!

samstave• 10 years ago

This is wonderful thank you.

noer2• 10 years ago

I'm a fan of the "Learn Enough..." series. I've found them to be written in a really approachable way, ditto on rails tutorial. Great job!

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks!

breakingcustom• 10 years ago

There are just some people in this world that have the reputation and thoroughness that makes you only want to learn new things from that one person. Hartl is one of the few. Thanks and can't wait for the rest!

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Wow, thanks! Would you mind shooting me an email (address in profile)? I might like to include this comment as part of a testimonial section at some point.

sotojuan• 10 years ago

This looks great. Looking forwards to the Ruby one as well. I also saw Elixir in the "Coming Soon" section. What are your opinions on the language?

mhartl21• 10 years ago

I don't know Elixir yet, but I'm collaborating with someone who does. I think the plan is he teaches me, then I teach you. :-)

I've heard great things about Elixir, and its design is heavily influenced by Ruby, so I think it will be a natural fit for Learn Enough to Be Dangerous.

thirdsun• 10 years ago

Additionally a fully featured Phoenix Tutorial would be very welcome as well - however that's probably a silly thing to suggest if you have to learn Elixir first.

noer2• 10 years ago

Out of curiosity, why do you use suggest using github in this book, but bitbucket in rails tutorial?

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Excellent question. The main reason is that GitHub is great for free public repos, which I generally like having as the default, and using GitHub also enables a Secret Bonus™ at the end of the Git tutorial. When it comes to web apps, though, it's better to err on the side of security, so in that case I recommend using free private repos at Bitbucket. (These choices were made mainly because public repos are free at GitHub and private repos are free at Bitbucket. Both services are great and are definitely worth paying for, but in a free online tutorial I prefer to recommend things that are also free.)

ryderm• 10 years ago

I can't speak for this book, but Michael Hartl's rails tutorial is what got me addicted to programming, and is largely responsible for me switching majors to CS during my undergrad and getting into the industry. He is a great technical author. Give him your money.

moomoos891• 10 years ago

I love you Michael Hartl!

nickjj4• 10 years ago

Hi Michael,

This is the first I've heard of the softcover platform.

After some research it looks like it was posted on HN about 2 years ago, but there's only a handful of books posted on the platform compared to let's say leanpub who has a few thousand.

Since you just posted this book on softcover, it's safe to say you're still happy using it, but why aren't more authors choosing your platform?

You would think after 2 years it would have gained traction, especially considering how big your reach is from previously successful tutorials and books.

I'm a content author and softcover looks nice. My main issue with leanpub is that all sales data is anonymous and you can't obtain e-mail addresses of your readers and your platform seems to solve that.

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks for the note. Softcover is absolutely amazing for my purposes, but at this point we think the educational market is more promising than the market for self-publishing tools, so that's what we're focusing on now. This was always part of our plan; I personally needed Softcover for the reasons you mention, but it was an open question whether it would take off as a standalone platform or whether we would end up focusing on making our own products.

A happy but unintended side-effect of making a platform is that it dramatically lowers the barrier to collaborating with other authors, and I'm currently working with several other people on more advanced and varied Learn Enough tutorials. This sort of collaborative publishing (with full control over the publication pipeline) would be effectively impossible without Softcover.

nickjj4• 10 years ago

I see, thanks for the reply.

So basically you've been spending your time and resources on creating the books rather than promoting the platform?

I will certainly reach out to you in the future because having access to e-mails is enough to move me off leanpub. In leanpub's defense they are a great bunch of people. I've had a number of conversations with their developers and they are always on the ball. Also never had any technical issues with their platform as an author.

mixmastamyk• 10 years ago

Hmm, both services look nice but don't appear to support Sphinx. Would that be a possibility at some point?

amai• 10 years ago

The new design of the "Learn Enough" series looks very nice. Will Softcover.io also take over this new design for its books?

aidanf3• 10 years ago

I used softcover for writing http://books.aidanf.net/learn-swift

The software is awesome for the purposes of writing the book. The reason I didn't go with softcover as a selling platform is that the new EU VAT rules came in and as a result I had to use someone that supported those new VAT collection rules.

So I ended up using softcover to generate the ebooks and html, but using gumroad (and leanpub) to sell them. So it's totally feasible to use softcover for writing your book but self-host the resulting html and keep control of your sales data etc.

nickjj4• 10 years ago

Does this only effect you if you're collecting income from EU or would it be a problem to even accept payments from people living in EU?

jeffwass2• 10 years ago

Nice logo!

Anjin3• 10 years ago

Thanks! There's also another variant that I created that we are using for our beta testing "Special Ops" team signup page: http://www.learnenough.com/special-ops

jeffwass2• 10 years ago

FYI, that page renders strangely on Safari on my iPhone. The text runs past the white rectangle background on the left half of the screen.

gerbilly• 10 years ago

Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

$ git init

juped• 10 years ago

Nothing in git is dangerous except push. This book advocates pushing quite often, making its title pretty accurate.

hvis3• 10 years ago

git reset --hard

slavik812• 10 years ago

Generally recoverable by checking git reflog and doing another git reset --hard back to how it was before.

git clean -dfx is the most probable way for me to delete something that I never committed.

nickpsecurity• 10 years ago

A previous thread and its uptake in FOSS showed I really need to get a grasp on Git soon. I'm more about practice than theory so I certainly liked this line:

"focuses on Git essentials without getting bogged down in lots of heavy theory."

Bookmarked it for later when I tackle that. Thanks ahead of time for writing and sharing it.

dEnigma• 10 years ago

The initial delay when opening the site, before the text appears below is very confusing, at least to me. I didn't know if I was supposed to click on something and tried scrolling up and down to trigger something. The delay lasted more than five seconds on first load and about 3-4 seconds on reloads (could be a problem on my end too).

soared• 10 years ago

That page is 9.2MB. Would've been smart to have a landing page or paginate.

mhartl21• 10 years ago

Thanks for the heads-up. We'll look into ways to speed things up in future releases.

randiLee• 10 years ago

This is great, thanks.

dave20002• 10 years ago

Is there supposed to be a free book here? The page doesn't work on mobile; I zoom in and a rectangle on the left pointlessly expands, covering the screen.

dave20002• 10 years ago

I've whitelisted all the JavaScript on the site and now an additional annoying box with "keep in touch" is floating over the centre of the page, and if I scroll the page underneath up and down so that the box doesn't cover it I can see "content not available". Is this your first site?

jakub_g• 10 years ago

This series looks very interesting and hitting the sweet spot with high knowledge density while still being casually readable.

Very nice of the author to put stuff on the website without the paywall.

Two semi-related links (though much different, focusing mostly on syntax):

https://learnxinyminutes.com/

http://hyperpolyglot.org/

Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous

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