First Commit

Remember, Git commits are used to save snapshots of your code at a specific point in time. Each commit should represent a single logical change to your codebase. For example, a commit might:

Add a new feature
Fix a new bug
Rework a bit of your code to be more readable

I usually make 2 or 3 commits for each hour I spend coding - that's not a hard rule, but might help you gauge how often you might be committing.

Assignment

Let's commit your README.md change.

View your diff. A "diff" is a visual aid that shows you the differences between two files. If you're in VS Code, now that you've saved a change, you should see a blue notification pill on the "source control" icon on the left of your VS Code window.

Click on it, and under "changes" take a look at your README.md file - you should see the diff view.

I like to use UI tooling (like this diff view) for visualizing changes, but I recommend using the command line for applying changes to Git.

If you're using the CLI, you can view your diff with the git diff command.

Stage your change.

git add .

The "." tells git to stage all the changes in the directory and all subdirectories.

Commit your change with a user-friendly message.

git commit -m "update readme with a description"

Now that your change has been committed locally, if you're in VSCode, you should notice that your source control tab on the left no longer has a blue notification - all your changes are committed! However, the commit hasn't been pushed up to GitHub yet for safekeeping.

Make sure you're authenticated with GitHub. You can use the GitHub CLI and run this command to login through your browser:

gh auth login

Push your changes:

git push origin main

Navigate to your repo on GitHub and take a look at the README.md file - you should see your changes!

If everything is in order, submit the GitHub checks.