So where does ‘GitHub’ come into it? 

Depending on who you talk to, GitHub can be referred to as multiple different things:

• A publishing tool
• A version control system
• A collaboration tool

Ultimately, GitHub is all of these things combined and more.

GitHub allows developers to host their files in a ‘Git Repository’ so that other people can collaborate on projects with them, whether they are open for public contribution (open source) or closed for specific colleagues to work on a private project. The idea is not dissimilar to the way Google Docs lets you host your word processing and spreadsheet files and opens them up for collaboration, though developers do not work on the same documents together in real time or make changes directly in the browser. 

One of the most common misconceptions about GitHub is that non-technical professionals, such as marketers, perceive the platform as purely a tool for developers. Interestingly, GitHub’s social dynamics and resource-sharing capabilities far more closely resemble that of a social network – and all marketers can appreciate the power and utility of social networks. 

GitHub’s thriving community of 12 million+ members can ”favorite” repositories they like, make comments on them, monitor and subscribe to different authors and repositories for updates or simply make a copy of somebody else’s content (source code) and start hacking together their own changes and improvements to them. 

Now, that you know what Git and GitHub is, let’s decode the lexicon used in by Git and Github’s most prolific users; developers. 

Here our top list of Git and GitHub references with their definitions so that you can impress the pants off your technical team at your next development WIP.