What are the fastest, most practical resources to learn GitHub by actually using it?

[damn9757]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Learning Paths

Body

I’ve been trying to learn GitHub, but honestly, most of the long YouTube tutorials I find are hard to stay focused on. I’d much rather learn by actually using GitHub instead of sitting through hours of someone explaining every little thing.

I’m looking for short, practical, beginner-friendly resources where I can learn GitHub by doing things myself.

I’d especially like to know:

• What resources are best for learning GitHub from scratch?
• Which GitHub concepts should I learn first?
• What can I safely skip for now?
• Are there any good interactive websites, short tutorials, hands-on projects, or documentation you’d recommend?
• What’s the fastest way to get comfortable with repositories, commits, branches, pull requests, issues, and contributing to open-source projects?

Basically, I want a hands-on learning path that gets me comfortable with GitHub quickly, without spending days watching tutorials.

[antonisloukis]

Hey, I’d skip the long GitHub tutorials and just make a small throwaway repo and practice the actual workflow.

Start with the basics: clone -> make a change -> git add -> git commit -> git push. Then create a branch, make another change, push it, and open a pull request back into main. After that, try creating an issue, linking it to a PR, resolving a merge conflict, and maybe forking another repo.
GitHub Skills is pretty good for this because the exercises happen inside real repositories instead of just being videos.

If you can comfortably use commits, branches, pull requests, issues, forks, and basic merge conflict resolution, you already have most of what you’ll use day to day.

[madhav9757]

thx for advise ...

[damn9757]

thx @antonisloukis it seems great advise, ik basics of the github as i watch videos but i wanna get a real experience of branch management , workflows and interacting a project flow through disscussion

[aaron-ACY]

I’d skip the long GitHub tutorials and learn by building a small “throwaway” repo.

Start with the basic workflow:

clone → make a change → git add → git commit → git push

Then practice:

branch → make another change → push → open a pull request → merge

Once that feels comfortable, add Issues, forks, and a simple merge conflict to the exercise.

GitHub Skills is probably the best resource for this style of learning because the exercises happen inside real GitHub repositories rather than just being videos.

I’d focus on these concepts first:

• repositories
• commits
• branches
• pull requests
• issues
• forks
• clone/push/pull
• basic merge conflicts

You can safely ignore things like rebasing, cherry-picking, Git internals, Actions, submodules, and other advanced features for now.

After that, pick a small open-source project and look for good first issue or documentation fixes. Making one real PR will probably teach you more than watching another 3-hour tutorial.

The goal isn’t to “finish learning GitHub” — it’s to repeat the workflow until it becomes muscle memory.

[damn9757]

Yeah… but the problem is, it’s honestly hard to find a good open-source project these days where you can properly learn contribution workflows, PRs, code reviews, and branch management by actually working on real issues.

[aaron-ACY]

Yeah, I agree. I think the hard part is less about learning Git commands and more about getting enough hands-on practice with the actual collaboration workflow.

A small throwaway repo sounds like a good way to build that muscle memory. Then GitHub Skills can fill in the gaps with PRs, issues, reviews, and conflicts.

[mehranditor]

If you prefer learning by doing, I’d skip the long YouTube tutorials too. GitHub actually has a really good hands-on path called GitHub Skills.

I’d recommend this order:

1. Start with “Introduction to GitHub” — it takes less than an hour and has you create a branch, make a commit, open a pull request, and merge it. You’re learning the workflow by actually using GitHub rather than watching someone else do it.

2. Learn these concepts first:

   • Repository
   • Commit
   • Branch
   • Pull request
   • Merge
   • Issues
   • Forks
   • Clone/push/pull if you’re going to use Git locally

   You don't need to understand every GitHub feature before starting. The basic repository → branch → commit → PR → merge workflow will take you surprisingly far.

3. Then practice pull requests and collaboration. GitHub Skills has an interactive “Review Pull Requests” course, which is a good next step once you understand the basic workflow.

4. Build something tiny. For example, create a repository for a small HTML page or README, create a feature branch, make a change, open a PR, review it, merge it, and delete the branch. Then repeat the process from your local machine using Git.

5. After that, try open source. Find a small project you actually use, read its README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md, look for beginner-friendly issues, fork the repository, make a small change, and submit a PR. That teaches you much more than memorizing Git commands.

I’d skip GitHub Actions, Projects, Packages, advanced branch strategies, Codespaces, security features, and Git internals for now. They’re useful, but you don't need them to become comfortable with everyday GitHub.

The nice thing about GitHub Skills is that the exercises happen directly inside GitHub using real features like Issues, Actions, and repositories, rather than being simulations.

If I had to reduce the whole learning path to one sentence:

Create repo → create branch → make change → commit → PR → review → merge → repeat → contribute to a real project.

Once you can do that without constantly wondering “what do I click next?”, you're already comfortable with the core of GitHub.

[ThiruXD]

Checkout GitHub Skills (Official) and Learn Git Branching to learn and to get Hands-On practical experience

Core Concepts to Master First

1. Repositories: Your project folder hosted on GitHub.
2. Commits: Snapshots of your code changes (like a game save-point).
3. Branches: Safe, isolated workspaces to experiment without breaking the main code.
4. Pull Requests: Asking the repository owner to review and merge your branch into the main code.
5. Issues: Digital sticky notes used to track bugs, tasks or feature requests