Use Git in Your Next Data Science Project

Let’s be honest, source control isn’t the most exciting topic to discuss in the world of data science, but it is crucial to both understand and use is it in your projects; continue reading to see why Git is your best choice for source control!

Here are the top 10 reasons to start using Git in your Data Science Projects

1. It’s free! You can download Git from here and install it. Once you have it installed you can create a Github account here and start creating and using repositories – all for free!
2. It’s easy to learn. While trying to learn all of the commands and capabilities of Git would be a huge undertaking, you can learn the basic concepts and commands in about an hour.
3. It can save you time and money (maybe even your job). Yes, catastrophes happen – hard drives fail, external drives fail, computers get dropped or stolen – it happens all the time. Using any source control – especially a decentralized one like Git – mitigates that risk by making it easy to backup your code off of your machine. In just seconds you can make sure that days, weeks, or even months of work are backed up “just in case” (avoid that awkward conversation with our boss about how you lost all of your work!).
4. Experiment without concerns. Experimentation is at the heart of data science. Git allows you to make changes quickly and easily while keeping a history of what you have done. Tried something that didn’t work, just revert the change and go back to what you were doing – no worries!
5. Collaborate with others. By providing others with access to your repository they can pull down your work, review it, test it, as well as making and committing changes – no more having to attach files to emails – save time and headaches.
6. Keep track of what you did and why. With comments on your commits, you (and others) can easily document and later understand what and why those changes were made.
7. Use the command line or your favorite IDE. While historically Git‘s focus has been on the command line, with its growing presence in the development community almost all popular Integrated Development Environments have plugins available which allow you to perform most tasks with just a couple of clicks.
8. You will need it for your (first or next) job. Nearly 82% of professional developers use Github (and correspondingly Git) as a collaborative tool, and data science teams and projects are rapidly moving in that direction.
9. Share your skills with the world. Increasingly, individuals, companies, universities, and organizations are sharing their research and work with the world using Github. Many are eager to get help with their initiatives and with knowledge on how to use Git you can contribute to that work – you can help change the world!
10. Add it to your resume. While there is some controversy regarding whether or not employers should be using Github contributions as a factor in hiring someone, the reality is that some are, and what better way to show off your passion for your work and what you can contribute to their organization than actually showing them the work you have done on your project!

Also, if you are new to Git and aren’t sure where to start we will be launching a free 7-part tutorial on the basics of Git. Sign up to receive email notifications so you won’t miss any of the lessons!