path: root/usth/ICT2.7/P1L4 Version Control Subtitles/2 - Interview with John Britton - lang_en_vs5.srt

1
00:00:00,170 --> 00:00:02,630
>> And I thought that the best way to break the ice on version

2
00:00:02,630 --> 00:00:04,970
control systems and Git and some other

3
00:00:04,970 --> 00:00:07,939
related concepts was to interview John Britton who

4
00:00:07,939 --> 00:00:11,840
works with GitHub. So let's go and see what John has to say about

5
00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:14,120
Git, about version control systems in general,

6
00:00:14,120 --> 00:00:17,809
and about GitHub. John is in Tapei, if I'm not wrong.

7
00:00:17,809 --> 00:00:18,610
>> That's correct.

8
00:00:18,610 --> 00:00:20,320
>> Okay so we're, you know we couldn't

9
00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:22,570
go there so we're interviewing him remotely. And I

10
00:00:22,570 --> 00:00:25,490
want, I just want to thank you so much and John for agreeing to talk to us.

11
00:00:25,490 --> 00:00:27,940
>> Thank you very much for having me it was my pleasure.

12
00:00:27,940 --> 00:00:30,560
>> And, I'm just going to ask, a few

13
00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:32,938
general questions because John is an expert on,

14
00:00:32,938 --> 00:00:36,270
Git and GitHub. John is a developer and

15
00:00:36,270 --> 00:00:38,550
a community builder is active in both the

16
00:00:38,550 --> 00:00:42,200
open source and the open education areas. And

17
00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:44,860
as an educational liaison we have, is working

18
00:00:44,860 --> 00:00:47,580
to improve Computer Science education by bringing the

19
00:00:47,580 --> 00:00:51,460
principles of open source into the classroom. And

20
00:00:51,460 --> 00:00:53,160
I'm going to start with an general question,

21
00:00:53,160 --> 00:00:55,320
which is what is a version control system?

22
00:00:55,320 --> 00:00:57,960
>> So, a version control system is

23
00:00:57,960 --> 00:01:00,360
a tool that software developers use. Anybody

24
00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:02,560
who's doing you know, working with digital

25
00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:06,540
assets, digital projects can also use for

26
00:01:06,540 --> 00:01:11,320
keeping track of, you know, revisions of your project, and when I say revisions, I

27
00:01:11,320 --> 00:01:16,850
mean essentially snapshots of your project over time. So you can imagine doing

28
00:01:16,850 --> 00:01:19,720
some work and then every so often, be it, every couple of

29
00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:23,799
hours, every couple of days, saving a permanent snapshot of your project.

30
00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:26,650
>> Why is this useful? I understand that

31
00:01:26,650 --> 00:01:28,720
it is nice to take a snapshot of your

32
00:01:28,720 --> 00:01:30,070
project, but what did you do with the

33
00:01:30,070 --> 00:01:33,420
snapshot afterwards? I think the most immediately obvious benefit

34
00:01:33,420 --> 00:01:36,340
to having snapshots of your project to keeping

35
00:01:36,340 --> 00:01:38,280
revisions is that you can go back. If you

36
00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:40,190
have ever worked on a project and got to

37
00:01:40,190 --> 00:01:41,940
a point where you solved a bunch of your

38
00:01:41,940 --> 00:01:45,330
problems, and there is just one more step to do. And

39
00:01:45,330 --> 00:01:47,640
you start working on trying to solve that last step, and

40
00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:51,350
you break things, you make it worse then it was an

41
00:01:51,350 --> 00:01:54,420
hour ago. At that point its easier to just go back

42
00:01:54,420 --> 00:01:56,780
to what you had then trying to figure out what you

43
00:01:56,780 --> 00:01:59,320
broke. So you can always go back in time, and the

44
00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:02,660
other big one is being able to collaborate with multiple people,

45
00:02:02,660 --> 00:02:07,450
so its pretty seldom these days that you. Work on a production

46
00:02:07,450 --> 00:02:09,860
totally on your own. It's most common to work in, you

47
00:02:09,860 --> 00:02:12,993
know, in teams and small groups. And so, using a revision

48
00:02:12,993 --> 00:02:16,340
control system allows you to collaborate with other people. And make

49
00:02:16,340 --> 00:02:19,060
sure that you don't step on each other's toes as you're working.

50
00:02:19,060 --> 00:02:21,310
>> Alright, that's great, because those are exactly some of the

51
00:02:21,310 --> 00:02:25,250
topics that we're going to cover in the lesson. And so since we're

52
00:02:25,250 --> 00:02:28,470
going to talk about the specifics of version control system which is

53
00:02:28,470 --> 00:02:32,660
Git and you're definitely an expert in, in Git. So what would

54
00:02:32,660 --> 00:02:36,510
you say is specifically special about Git? What characterizes it

55
00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:39,940
and how does it compare to other version control systems.

56
00:02:39,940 --> 00:02:43,140
>> So if any of you have used version control systems before, you

57
00:02:43,140 --> 00:02:47,850
may have heard of something like subversion, CVS, or maybe a commercial solution

58
00:02:47,850 --> 00:02:53,550
like ProForce. I think the main important characteristics of Git are first that

59
00:02:53,550 --> 00:02:56,050
it's open source. And the second,

60
00:02:56,050 --> 00:02:59,030
that it's a distributed version control system.

61
00:02:59,030 --> 00:03:00,430
So what that means, the distributed version

62
00:03:00,430 --> 00:03:04,260
control system is essentially a system for tracking

63
00:03:04,260 --> 00:03:07,700
revisions of your software that doesn't have any

64
00:03:07,700 --> 00:03:11,730
central repository. So the biggest characteristic is that

65
00:03:11,730 --> 00:03:14,520
I can do my work and you can also work on the same project at

66
00:03:14,520 --> 00:03:16,900
the same time without communicating with each other

67
00:03:16,900 --> 00:03:19,650
and without communicating to a central system.

68
00:03:19,650 --> 00:03:24,190
>> Okay, great. And so now that we saw what Git is, what is

69
00:03:24,190 --> 00:03:26,050
GitHub and how does it fit into

70
00:03:26,050 --> 00:03:29,320
this picture of the distributed, revision control system?

71
00:03:29,320 --> 00:03:34,800
>> So GitHub is, the world's largest code host, and we essentially have a

72
00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:36,940
website where you can collaborate with people

73
00:03:36,940 --> 00:03:39,950
when you're writing code. There's two ways you

74
00:03:39,950 --> 00:03:43,650
can use GitHub. You can use it publicly for open source and you can use

75
00:03:43,650 --> 00:03:49,660
it in private within your team, or your company, or within your class. And, Git

76
00:03:49,660 --> 00:03:53,960
Hub started out just as a way to host your Git repositories. But it's

77
00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:56,000
actually grown into quite a bit more. It's

78
00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:59,820
an entire collaboration system around your code.

79
00:03:59,820 --> 00:04:00,580
>> How many users do you have?

80
00:04:00,580 --> 00:04:03,620
>> I would say that we're approaching five million.

81
00:04:03,620 --> 00:04:05,570
I don't know the exact number. We're definitely more

82
00:04:05,570 --> 00:04:08,080
than four million right now. But yeah, I'd say

83
00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:10,330
somewhere, somewhere close to between four and five million.

84
00:04:10,330 --> 00:04:14,750
>> So that's a lot space I'd guess. Terabytes of disk

85
00:04:14,750 --> 00:04:15,840
space, I would imagine.

86
00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:19,170
>> There are a lot of GIT repositories on, on our servers.

87
00:04:19,170 --> 00:04:21,180
>> Something else you want to say? I

88
00:04:21,180 --> 00:04:23,920
guess that the when taking about GitHub there's one

89
00:04:23,920 --> 00:04:26,110
thing that you kind of can't leave out and

90
00:04:26,110 --> 00:04:28,670
that's that's a feature that's called a pull request.

91
00:04:28,670 --> 00:04:31,090
So when you're using GitHub, you can share

92
00:04:31,090 --> 00:04:34,940
your Git repository, do some work, and actually do

93
00:04:34,940 --> 00:04:37,880
do a code review. Of proposed changes which

94
00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:39,770
is what we call a pull request on github.com.

95
00:04:39,770 --> 00:04:42,790
Essentially what it lets you do is have a discussion

96
00:04:42,790 --> 00:04:46,320
about a set of proposed changes and leave feedback in

97
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,870
line with the code. You could say for example, this

98
00:04:48,870 --> 00:04:51,670
method needs to be re-factored or I think I found if

99
00:04:51,670 --> 00:04:54,830
off by one error here, just different kinds of feedback

100
00:04:54,830 --> 00:04:59,120
so that before you totally integrate some proposed changes. You have,

101
00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:01,180
kind of a conversation about what your code. And I

102
00:05:01,180 --> 00:05:03,050
think that's really valuable when you are working in a team.

103
00:05:03,050 --> 00:05:05,510
>> Thank you, John, that was very informative and

104
00:05:05,510 --> 00:05:07,440
thanks again for taking the time to talk to us.

105
00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:10,160
>> No problem, thanks for having me. I'll talk to you soon.

106
00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:13,990
>> Let's thank again John for enlightening us

107
00:05:13,990 --> 00:05:17,350
on some aspects of version control systems, Git and

108
00:05:17,350 --> 00:05:19,410
GitHub. And now, let's go over some of the

109
00:05:19,410 --> 00:05:21,650
topics that we discussed with John to recap them.