GitHub is being used by the information technology department to work concurrently on projects we are looking to implement in the coming months. It addressed the issue of having to work together and input code from various locations.
Pros
The ability to access GitHub on multiple platform makes organizing files very easy.
GitHub is intuitive enough to help new users immediately understand its platform and how to use it. It has instructions and help notes at every turn to help with this and the UI is user-friendly.
The best aspect of GitHub in my opinion is its ability to track your activity and also shows you a working map of of your activity over time. This can help with planning and scheduling of one's work.
Cons
I think GitHub should incorporate two-factor authentication to improve user account security.
The Macbook GitHub application could be improved to be more intuitive.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think GitHub is well suited for individual or group projects. However, I cannot think of a scenario where it is less appropriate but not customizable to fit the situation. GitHub is highly customizable to fit various situations and uses.
Git Hub is not used in any official capacity but there are numerous staff (developers), instructors and staff that use this industry-standard platform for sharing code and working collaboratively on websites and apps.
Pros
Great for sharing code and collaborating with the coders around the world.
Versioning: By installing Git on your local machine and taking a regular snapshot (called commits) you can restore your project to any previous point without having to keep multiple versions of your files.
I consider GitHub to be social media for coders/developers if social media was actually useful. There are tons of free resources and the community is fantastic.
With GitHub you can host a simple static website for FREE (which is better than AWS s3 buckets IMO)— this is a great alternative to vendors like GoDaddy or BlueHost, etc.
Cons
The UI isn't super intuitive at first but help is easy to find.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are out applying for web design/developer jobs and don't have a GitHub account it will very likely work against you. Having a solid understanding of version control, branching and managing your files with GIT through the terminal via command line is no longer an optional skill
Our department uses GitHub as its dedicated private repository for our production-facing web applications. In general, GitHub is popular across our organization (a public university), especially for students. GitHub gives us a high-quality, secure, cloud-based Git repository system at no cost, allowing our team to safely store application code, and to pull updates to our test and production environments, with minimal effort.
Pros
GitHub is a great, free or low-cost cloud-based Git repository system for smaller teams; it's easy to add members and collaborators to one or more repositories, as well as to modify user roles and rights.
GitHub provides a handy and highly transparent front end on top of the renowned Git system. Visibility into developer productivity, including code commits, is well-represented in GitHub's dashboards.
GitHub provides extremely detailed and focused user support documentation online, allowing every team member to build their Git skills incrementally while ensuring that most basic issues are handled quickly via end-user self-service.
Cons
GitHub packs a lot of functionality into its website; sometimes it can be difficult to navigate to the correct sub-page; the various drop-down selection boxes and sidebar menus can be confusing to users, especially ones with lightweight experience with the interface.
GitHub allows for substantial flexibility in user account management - Administering dedicated team members and collaborators across a large number of repositories can get tricky, especially if users have varying access rights or roles across various repositories.
Knowing the difference between user and organization accounts is key, there have been many times where I've wasted minutes looking at the wrong account trying to find a relevant setting or feature. For example, to view correct account billing information, one must be on the organization account, not the user account that has administrator rights for the organization.
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub is a great, free option for individuals, who can take advantage of unlimited public and private repositories. For team-based organizations, it's a reasonably low-priced, high-quality way to reap the benefits of a cloud-based repository system. Larger organizations with multiple teams may find hosting their own Git servers to be a more cost-effective option when compared to GitHub's Enterprise pricing plan, but said plan's support for cloud and self-hosting options allows enterprise users to have their cake (on-premises ownership of code repositories) and eat it, too (use of GitHub's sophisticated web-based front-end to Git).
The whole organization uses GitHub. GitHub permits anyone in our org. (over 100,000 people) to securely store an entire record of any changes, including the most recent for any text/code. It's available 24/7, and countless people rely on its authoritative content. It permits multiple people or automations to make changes to the base document, commit it to the central server, and track minute changes over the full history from the beginning, along with each person and what they changed.
Pros
The vendor continuously updates the product, keeping it secure and stable.
The effort of administration is easier than with most other repositories. Maybe two hours a week.
An excellent User community and high-quality Documentation online.
Cons
Sunday vendor support for normal Licenses. Most often, upgrades are implemented on Sundays.
The LDAP link often times out due to the extreme size of our ADS Repository. However, LDAP login remains working perfectly.
Additional support for Single Sign-on applications, although it does support 2FA and more recently CAS connection.
Likelihood to Recommend
Technical knowledge of Terminal Commands is nearly required, although there are a number of GUI tools to ease access. Although at first glance the commands to a distributed repository would seem easy, they are NOT SO. Considerable focus and learning are required, especially for non-common situations.
The software is extremely reliable, running 24/7 for 1 month at a time with NO faults once it's configured successfully.
Our organization currently uses GitHub as a platform to collaborate with our remote developers on the new website that is in the works. Only the IT/Web Development team is using GitHub, the other employees would have no use for this platform. A major business problem GitHub solves is the ability to share code with our remote developers with efficient version control for editing.
Pros
Codesharing
Version Control Hosting - this keeps all the ducks in a row ... The ability to manage various stages of projects is a must with any changes or edits being made other than myself.
Public Repositories - Free public repositories allow for outside professionals to suggest improvement and the ability to commit the changes an individual makes if you so desire.
Cons
Private repositories are far too expensive
Beginners: GitHub is definitely not the easiest to learn or understand. There are resources out there to assist you, but I found it much easier to understand the platform and its capabilities once I joined a team that was already well versed and could assist with any quick questions I may have had.
Apple / Linux OS get the shortend of the stick and have to use the command line
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub is great for hosting your projects for free, receiving advice or help from fellow developers in the community, comfortably working with remote developers through code sharing and version control hosting, and lastly the ability to review code from contributing developers for any flaws with a variety of code tools. GitHub has a plethora of applications and code tools that you can integrate with the platform or vice versa
All the members of my research team, who are members of various departments, use GitHub for version control. Besides version control for code, we also use GitHub to write collaborative papers and store important code from previous research projects. Developing code as a team is incredibly difficult without good version control software. Fortunately, GitHub facilitates this process by making it easy to reconcile conflicting versions of code or reports. Furthermore, 'branching' makes it easy for several people to work on different sections of a project without affecting the main project. The changes made on 'branches' can later be merged back into the overall project. Since most of the members of my research team are in different buildings within our organization and in different states, GitHub also allows us to all work remotely on code as a team. GitHub avoids the inefficiencies that result from emailing reports to team members and having to merge track changes. Finally, GitHub acts like a back-up tool, which is incredibly useful. GitHub makes it easy to revert back to a previous version of a project, because it saves the changes that are made by team members on a timeline. Overall, GitHub has made our code development much more efficient and saves us a lot of time and hassle!
Pros
The GitHub feature I like most is that it keeps track of all changes made to a project. Prior to using GitHub, I would write code, delete parts of it and rewrite it...only to realize a few weeks later that I should have kept the original version. With GitHub, I can always go back to a previous version.
Although GitHub has a bit of a steep learning curve, it is relatively easy even for beginners to get started. The GitHub website has clear directions for creating a repo, setting up an account and the basics of the GitHub workflow. I found these tutorials very helpful when I started using GitHub.
I like that GitHub has options in terms of user interface. Currently, I use GitHub via the command line, but there are also GUIs that make GitHub accessible to beginners as well.
Recent versions of MATLAB, R, and PyCharm (plus others) include options to link to a GitHub repository.
Cons
GitHub is not easy to learn for beginners. It took me about a year to really feel comfortable with it. For those who are not experienced programmers, GitHub can be difficult to get used to.
Although I appreciate that GitHub allows merging of different versions, merging two conflicting versions can be quite difficult. The default merge tool in GitHub is vimdiff, which I found incredibly unintuitive. I installed a different tool, Meld, which I like much better.
One of the best things about GitHub is that it is free. However, with a free account, you can only create public repositories (anyone can access your repository). You can create private repos in GitHub, but they are not free.
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub is the best tool I've come across for collaborative code development (although it is also great for working on solo code development!). Working with many people on code is usually cumbersome, but with GitHub, it is relatively painless! Because GitHub is free, GitHub is a great choice when money is tight (but again, the free version of GitHub only allows the creation of public repositories). If money is not an issue, however, you can create private repositories for a $7 a month. Because GitHub is rather difficult to learn, I would recommend it to those who have an interest or previous experience in coding and computer science.
We use GitHub as the main repository service for all of our projects, from websites to applications to style guides. Our account is set up primarily for departmental use, but really GitHub is used across most of IT in the organization. GitHub allows us to get work done well in a team environment.
Pros
Source control
Uptime
Collaboration
Project management
Ease of use
Speed
Design
Cons
Pricing
Project management
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub is well suited for people or organizations that want the best git repo service available. It is for those who are comfortable with paying for the somewhat pricy plans or for those who are okay with leaving projects as open source. If you can't afford the GitHub plans and you don't want to leave all your projects as open source, then there are other free services available that will work just fine, leaving out some of the luxuries of GitHub.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 5001-10,000 employees)
We are using GitHub to keep code snippets and small scripts versioned and organized. One issue that we've encountered is that there are numerous Python, Perl, and PowerShell scripts lying around file shares at different versions. GitHub is used to keep these scripts in a central location that provides versioning and management and tracking of updates.
Pros
GitHub is a great tool if you don't want to keep all your code private and want to solicit outside contributions due to its community.
The secondary features like Wiki and issue tracking are well integrated into the main Git component.
Cons
GitHub is a well-rounded product, but GitLab is surpassing them in features. Some of the less known features in GitHub are hard to find without knowing where to look.
Switching and managing branches is complex and not that intuitive.
The hosted downloads function is hard to find and use if not directly linked to.
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub is great for general purpose Git and issue tracking. I think there are better products out there if you need a more advanced or feature rich product, but I think GitHub excels the most at being simple and is widely used. Almost anyone you meet will know how to use GitHub in some way or another, which I think is GitHub's best selling point.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Higher Education company, 1001-5000 employees)
I use github to hold most of my work for companies or for any other people that need to check out my work. I interned at Verizon last summer and one intern started up github usage in Verizon, and also used githib for a hackathon with the other interns.
Pros
Showing your skill.
Work holder.
Effective.
Cons
The graphic user interface design - the design does not look modern.
Provide guides for new users who are not experienced with github.
Likelihood to Recommend
I would recommend github to the colleagues because it can be used as portfolio to show your coding and programming skills. It is well suited to use as a portfolio. It can be used by people who need help with their project.
It's being used as a way to share our projects within a group. It allows us to collaborate our progress and share it with everyone in a quick and easy way. In addition, it helps bolster communication within a group.
Pros
Good for group projects
Good for communication
Good for sharing
Cons
Sometimes is buggy
Must know how to use the interface or else you may end up getting a glitched version of your code
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for group coding, but not very well suited for group essays or things that use txt files.
