Toward meaningful commits
Hi all,
So far, when teaching Git, I've tended to ask you to do pretty arbitrary things, like just add a sentence about yourself and so on. The reason for this is that Git is hard enough to learn, so asking you to learn Git while also really working as a historian can be a bit much.
However I think these 'dummy commits' are a bit harmful, especially after two or three times using them. They aren't motivating, and can perhaps give an impression that there's no good reason for learning Git, which I don't think is true at all.
So, I'd happily take some suggestions, especially for future iterations of the class -- what kinds of things could you commit in the first weeks that are useful, but still not very complex?. Bear in mind, I think it's good practice to commit some new folders, files, do additions and deletions, files other than just markdown, etc.---it's a bit boring to just add line after line to a 'bio' markdown file, in my opinion.
For the remainder of the course
I also wanted to suggest that we try to reduce dummy commits from here on out. Since you're now on your way toward defining and carrying out your various projects, I think if possible, you should try to commit project-related stuff. For example, make a folder in the root directory containing your project-to-be, and add a README.md that will be displayed when we click the folder. The README.md can contain a basic description of your project, or of the ideas you're considering, or whatever. But yeah, no dummy content, keep it meaningful. And if you don't have anything meaningful, at least make it useful for the rest of us, deleting earlier dummy-committed content, fixing typos, adding better markdown directives, that kind of thing.
Gimme thumbs if you see this