Imagine you have a brand new project. Naturally, you plan to store all related files in a single new directory. As work progresses, these files will change. A lot. Things will get disorganized, even messy, and at some point even completely fubar. At that point, you would want to go back in time to the most recent not-messy, still-working version of your project — if only that were possible!
Well, thanks to git, it is. Version control happens when you install git on your computer. Git is built to create that new project directory, and to keep track of all the changes you make to any and all files you put in that directory. As things progress and you make additions and changes, git takes a “snapshot” of the current version. And that, friends, is version control: make a small change, take a snapshot, make another small change, take a snapshot…And save all of these snapshots in chronological order. You can then use git to step back and forth as necessary through each version of your project directory.
So when you screw up, git is like having this magic ability to go back in time to the last good version before you gaffed. Thus, version control. git is not the only version control systems out there, but it is probably the most widely used.
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