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Add "Why?" page
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‎index.md‎

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@@ -11,14 +11,15 @@ hard to get started. I hope these pages help. (More blather below.)
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There are many resources for git and github; my aim is to provide the
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minimal guide to get started.
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- Why?
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- [Why?](pages/why.html)
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- [Your first time](pages/first_time.html): get account; set up ssh
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- Typical use: add, commit, push
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- Start new repository: from scratch; using current project
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- [Contribute to someone's repository](pages/fork.html)
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- I want to fix a bug in someone's project
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- A package I'm using has a bug but I can't figure out how to fix it
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- Oops; that last commit message was wrong
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- Merge conflicts
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- Exploring the code and its history
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- Resources
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statisticians with no history of use of version control, it can be
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hard to get started. This is a tutorial of sorts, to help.
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[Pjotr Prins](http://www.thebird.nl) got me to move from SVN to
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[Pjotr Prins](http://www.thebird.nl) got me to move from subversion to
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git, but don't hold him responsible for any
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errors in my understanding.
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‎pages/why.md‎

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---
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layout: page
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title: Why git and github?
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---
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### Why use [git](http://git-scm.com)?
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_Version control is the only reasonable way to keep track of changes_
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in code, manuscripts, presentations, and data analysis projects. I
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used to make numbered tar.gz files for a project. But exploring the
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differences is difficult, to say the least. And if you use git
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properly, you'll have annotated each small change.
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_Merging collaborators' changes made easy._ Have you ever had to
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deal with a collaborator sending you modifications distributed across
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many files, or had to deal with two people having made changes to the same
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file at the same time? Painful. `git merge` is the answer.
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### Why use [github](http://github.com)?
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_Github is like facebook for programmers._ Everyone's on there. You
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can look at what they're working on and easily peruse their
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code and make suggestions or changes.
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_It's really open source._ “Open source” is not so open if
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you can't easily study it. With github, all of the code easily
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inspected, as is its entire history.
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_Github lowers the barriers to collaboration._ It's dead easy to
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offer suggested changes to others' code through github. I was able to
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[fix a mistake](https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/commit/903a5e821a54a7dc5a2695e47db3abe2517742fe)
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in the
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[phobos library](https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos) for
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the [D programming language](http://dlang.org), because it's hosted on
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github. I
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[fixed some problems](https://github.com/Caged/d3-tip/commit/c0117472438db94e0cf3febd45bf768ddc1bea5c)
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in some very useful code developed by someone I don't know, because
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it's hosted on github.

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