Learn Git
Incorporate GIT In Your Workflow.
While it has been months since I have posted an article, I have remained busy learning and improving my skills. In that time, I have worked with Terraform, PowerShell, Python, and Bash. Something that is common in all of this is that I have used Git as my version control system (vcs). It's distributed nature and ubiquity are quite handy. It is such a time saver to be able to work on scripts on one workstation and `git push` to a repository and then `git clone` or `git pull` on another workstation.
The usefulness of a version control system is not limited to the purview of software engineers or developers. Infrastructure people, devops people, sysadmins, DBAs, technical writers, or whatever title or buzzword people fall under; a vcs can be very helpful. While there have been a number of version control systems, such as cvs or subversion, git is the current defacto standard. Whatever an I.T. professional's role, not developing some basic functionality is to be at a handicap. Git is used not only for code versioning but document versioning as well by many.
The reluctance on the part of many sysadmins or other IT professionals to make an effort to learn scripting and version control is a shame. It is a pity, as there are many great resources online for learning git and various scripting tools. The actual scripting language used is not so important as learning the skills to script and leverage git. Aside from scripting, keeping your own notes and documentation in Markdown and storing them in git is extremely handy. It makes it easy to access your notes and share documentation with your team. These efforts need not be part of some extraordinary project. Incorporating small efforts into the routine pays dividends over time.
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Once basic git concepts are learned, then leveraging the hosted git-oriented platforms is a logical move. Services like GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket add features and extend the functionality of git. Some people seem to think git and GitHub are synonymous, but such a conclusion is fallacious. GitHub and GitLab in particular provide wiki and CI capabilities well beyond the scope of git itself and BitBucket offers integrations with other Atlassian products like JIRA and Confluence.
Ultimately, the point is that anyone in I.T. today is a coder regardless of whether or not they are a software engineer. Even on personal projects, using git and growing new skills is part of both code development and professional development. It can be as mundane as a python script to rename and tag vacation photos or Infrastructure as Code modules to deploy a Kubernetes cluster. Picking up some scripting and learning git has value.
Happy Computing.
