What are the best ways to learn Git as a complete beginner?

A slow, beginner-friendly video course can help with installing Git, creating a local repository, and connecting it to a remote hosting service. The Git and GitHub for Poets series is still a popular introduction, especially if you prefer watching someone demonstrate the command line. Interactive games such as Oh My Git! are another fun way to reinforce the basics.

Start with Learn Git Branching. It’s interactive and makes commits, branches, merges, and the underlying history much easier to understand. After that, use Git on a small personal project instead of trying to memorize every command. You’ll learn faster by making changes, checking what happened, and occasionally fixing mistakes.

Don’t spend weeks only watching tutorials. Set up a tiny project, add a README and a .gitignore file, make frequent commits, and practice viewing the history and undoing changes. It’s fine to look up commands or ask an AI assistant about them as you work, as long as you understand what the command is going to do before running it.

Git Immersion is a great step-by-step introduction to the practical side of Git. The official Pro Git book is also an excellent reference once you want more detail. For the concepts behind Git, The Git Parable is a short and approachable explanation, and Think Like a Git is useful after you already know the basics.

You can learn the everyday workflow with just a few commands. Pull before starting, edit your files, then check and save your changes:

git pull
git status
git add .
git commit -m "Describe what changed"
git push

Use this on a small project until it feels natural. You don’t need to understand every advanced feature before you begin.