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Course Review

Learn Git the Hard Way

Educative

Here is our in-depth review of Learn Git the Hard Way, based on hours of rigorous testing and evaluation.

Updated: August 25, 2023

Bottom Line

Solid hands-on option for learning the basics of Git.

This Course is Great For

  • Hands-on Learning
  • Getting Up to Speed Quickly

Fast Facts

Learn Git the Hard Way

Learn Git the Hard Way

Educative

By Ian Miell

💰 $24.99 per month 🕗 2.5 hours
👩‍💻 Readings, Coding Challenges, Quizzes, Assessments

#4 in The Best Online Courses for Learning Git and GitHub in 2024

This course focuses on teaching Git through a series of coding exercises, in which you type commands and study the results. The goal of this method is developing a connection between the knowledge and hands-on application.

Each lesson takes you step by step through common commands to illustrate the concepts. Things don’t get real-world for a while - you’re mostly adding 1-2 words to files and then committing the changes - but it’s helpful for understanding and practicing the steps one after the other, to build on your understanding.

The assessments are multiple choice and true-false questions, and mostly ask for recall of details about Git, such as whether GitHub created Git. They’re decent checks for understanding and reiteration of the concepts, but generally aren’t a substitute for practice and a hands-on project requiring you to piece together everything you’ve learned.

Before You Buy

The course does contain some exercises that involve GitHub, but isn't explicitly about using GitHub. As a result, you'll need to supplement with another course that covers some unique features of GitHub.

Unfortunately, the assessments don’t give you feedback on which questions you missed - and thus which topics you might need more practice. Instead, you get a letter grade.

Go to Course

Other Courses to Consider to Learn Git and GitHub

Version Control with Git

Version Control with Git

Udacity

By Richard Kalehoff

💰 Free 🕗 10 hours
👩‍💻 Videos| Readings| Exercises

#3 in The Best Online Courses for Learning Git and GitHub in 2024

Among the best free resources for learning Git foundations.

Read Our Full Review

Learn Git and GitHub

Learn Git and GitHub

Codecademy

By Various Authors

💰 $29.99 per month 🕗 15 hours
👩‍💻 Readings| Videos| Coding Challenges| Quizzes| Projects

#3 in The Best Online Courses for Learning Git and GitHub in 2024

Solid hands-on option for learning the basics of Git and GitHub.

Read Our Full Review

CS50 Git Lecture

CS50 Git Lecture

CS50

By Brian Yu

💰 Free 🕗 2 hours
👩‍💻 Videos| Lecture Notes

#4 in The Best Online Courses for Learning Git and GitHub in 2024

Engaging lecture and notes covering the essentials of using Git and GitHub.

Read Our Full Review

Why You Should Trust Us

Our course reviews are conducted by a team of technical professionals, course developers, and lifelong learners.

The lead of this project, Brian Green, has worked in developer education since 2009. He built the content development teams at Pluralsight and Udacity, implementing quality standards and tutorials to improve course quality and working with hundreds of authors to create courseware. Most recently, he built the product team at App Academy. As of writing, he estimates he has spent nearly a year of his life taking or reviewing online courses, on topics ranging from Web Development, Networking, Server Administration, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.

How We Tested

Evaluation Criteria

We reviewed this course using the following criteria:

  1. Outcomes: The course needs to cover the essentials for someone to start working with Git and GitHub in a professional capacity or on a professional-grade project. That means covering the right topics and not going beyond the scope of the course objectives.
  2. Learning Features: Real skill development happens with fingers on keys, particularly for learners moving from novice level. We looked for courses with more than just videos; exercises and projects were essential.
  3. Production Quality: The course should include polished and professional course materials. In 2024, the table stakes of even an average course are professional video production, uniform sound levels and noise-free audio, and course materials that are free of typos. Videos should also be captioned and transcribed.
  4. Real World Application: A great course teaches you enough to work on a production application. We looked for examples and best practices from professional experience, not just basic examples of how something works on a toy application.
  5. Support and Community: Learning is better together! We promote courses with thriving communities and rapid, helpful support for learners, and tend to rate courses lower if they lack community or if the community isn't valuable.

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