If you ever shared code using pendrive or email or WhatsApp, this one’s for you.
We used pendrive in college. Four people, one 16GB stick, passing around.
I add my code, give to next guy, he adds his. Worked fine for week.
Then one day we open folder and Rahul’s code is missing. Someone had older version, copied it over. Nobody knew who had latest anymore.
We rewrote overnight. Didn’t talk much, just typed.
But the real problem wasn’t the pendrive.
The actual problem
No history. Once you overwrite, old code is gone. Forever.
No tracking. Who changed login.js? When? Why? Nobody knows.
No undo. Something broke but was working yesterday? Too bad. Find it manually.
No teamwork. Two people edit same file? Someone’s work getting deleted for sure.
This isn’t college only problem. Companies had same issues. I met devs who emailed zip files to each other in 2010. Subject line: “code_final_v3_USE_THIS.zip”.
Imagine opening inbox with 50 such mails.
What version control actually does
Think of it like Google Docs history. You know that feature where you see all past edits? Who typed what, when?
Git does that for code. But way better.
Every time you save (called “commit”), git stores:
- What exactly changed (line by line)
- Who changed it
- When
- Why (you write short message)
You can see entire history of project. Go back to any point. See what code looked like 3 months ago.
It’s like time machine for your project.
Real example
Without git:
"code is broken"
"what changed?"
"no idea"
"which file?"
"maybe login.js? or api.js? check both"
*2 hours of searching*
With git:
git log --oneline
a3b4c5 - fixed login validation (today)
d6e7f8 - added new api route (yesterday)
g9h0i1 - updated database config (3 days ago)
Broke after today’s change? One command: git revert a3b4c5. Done. You’re back to working state.
Why it matters
Last month at work. Production bug. Users complaining.
Checked git log. Found which change caused it. Reverted.
Whole thing took 10 minutes.
Without git this would be hours of panic and manual searching. Probably would’ve mass texted the team at midnight asking “did anyone change something??”
The point
Version control exists because code needs history.
Humans forget things, make mistakes, overwrite stuff. Git remembers everything so you don’t have to.
Every company uses it. Every job posting expects it. Learning basic git takes one afternoon. That’s it.
If you’re still on pendrive/email/gdrive method - you’re solving a solved problem the hard way.
Next one I’ll cover actual commands. git init, add, commit. The real stuff.
