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Learning Git branching interactively

Summary

Peter Cottle develops a visual practice environment in which Git commands change a commit graph immediately. Learn Git Branching runs in the browser. It covers rebase, cherry-pick and remotes.

Ideas

  • Every exercise has a visible starting graph and target graph.
  • Commands change branches, commits and HEAD with animation.
  • Local and remote operations are practised separately.
  • Mistakes can be undone and repeated without risk.

Insights

  • Visualisation connects commands with their actual data model.
  • Safe sandboxes encourage experiments with operations that seem risky.
  • Task-based feedback makes abstract graphs manageable.

Facts

  • The project is open source.

Recommendations

  • Solve exercises without hints first.
  • Then carry out the same workflow in a test repository.

References

Read the original article

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