• git is a version control system that allows you to track changes in your code
• It works similarly to Dropbox or Google Drive, but it is way more powerful
• For instance, you can go back to any version of your code, see who made changes, collaborate with others, and merge different versions into a single one
• git works in the command line, with graphical interfaces (e.g., GitHub Desktop), and integrated into code editors (e.g., VS Code)
• git is a tool that you can use locally (only on your computer) or remotely (on a server like GitHub). If used online, it allows you to store your code in the cloud and collaborate with others (including yourself in the future!)

• git can track changes in any type of file, not only code
• In our case, we will use git to track changes in our Jupyter Notebooks too
• While git has several commands, you will only need to use a few of them
• The most common commands are git clone, git add, git commit, git push, and git pull. We will cover them in this lecture

• GitHub is a website that hosts git repositories
• A repository is a folder that contains your code and its history
• GitHub allows you to share your code with others, collaborate, and contribute to other people’s projects
• In this course, you will use GitHub to submit your assignments and access the course materials
• GitHub offers many benefits to students, and you should consider using it for your projects and assignments even after this course
• Please create an educational account at GitHub Education to access private repositories and GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer

• GitHub has a graphical interface that makes it easy to navigate and interact with repositories
• You can create repositories, branches, issues, pull requests, and more
• GitHub also offers a feature called GitHub Pages, which allows you to create websites for free (such as this one!). But we will not cover it in this course
• Think of GitHub as a social network for code, where you can follow people, star repositories, and contribute to open-source projects

• GitHub Desktop is a graphical interface for git
• It allows you to clone repositories, make changes, commit them, and push them to GitHub without using the command line
• You can also create branches, merge them, and resolve conflicts
• In our course, you will use GitHub Desktop to fork the course’s repository, update the course materials, and submit your assignments
• Let’s install GitHub Desktop and clone the course’s repository
• Please follow the instruction at https://github.com/apps/desktop

• To fork the course’s repository, go to https://github.com/danilofreire/qtm151
• Click on the Fork button in the top right corner (on the website!)
• You will be redirected to your GitHub account, where you will see a copy of the course’s repository. Click okay to continue
• This is important because you will now have your own copy of the course’s materials
• You can make changes to your copy without affecting the original repository
• Feel free to explore the repository and the files in it!

• If you have already forked it, great!
• You should see the same repository, but with your username instead of mine
• For instance: https://github.com/your-username/qtm151
• If you have that repository, you are ready to download it to your computer
• Please download your forked repository, not the original one!

• Open GitHub Desktop and click on “Clone a Repository from the Internet” (the second button)
• A window will open, then you click on “URL”
• You just need to type your username and the repository name (e.g., your-username/qtm151)
• Choose a local path to save the repository (a folder in your computer) and click on “Clone”
• And that’s it! Now you have the folder in your computer! :)

• To make changes to your repository, you need to follow three steps: add, commit, and push
• git add (file) tells git to track changes in a file
• git commit -m "message" saves the changes in the file. You always need to write a message when you make changes, so you can remember what you did
• git push sends the changes to GitHub
• You can also use GitHub Desktop to do these steps without using the command line, but this is what is happening behind the scenes
• Let’s make a change to the repository and see how it works

• You will see a screen like this on GitHub Desktop
• You can either click on “Open the repository in your editor” or open the folder in your computer
• Then, you can make changes to the files in the folder (add code, remove lines, etc)

• I have made some changes to the repository in my computer
• You can see the changes on GitHub Desktop. The lines in green are new lines, and the lines in red are removed lines
• Now we have to commit the changes
• Write a message in the little box at the bottom of the screen and click on “Commit to main”
• The message should be short and describe what you did

• After committing the changes, you need to push them to GitHub
• Click on “Push origin” to send the changes to your repository
• You will see a progress bar at the bottom of the screen
• Once the changes are pushed, you can see them on GitHub
• Just go to your repository on GitHub and check the files!
• You can also see the changes in the “History” tab on GitHub Desktop

And you’re done! :)

• Now that you know how to make changes to your repository, it is time to learn how to download new content that I add to the course’s repository
• In git terms, pull or fetch are the commands that you use to update your local repository with new changes from the online repository
• You can do this easily on GitHub Desktop: just click on Fetch origin
• It will download the changes to your computer, and you can see them in the “History” tab
• That’s all there is to it!

• Please remember to pull changes before you start working on your assignments :)

• If you want to learn more about git and GitHub, I recommend the following resources:
  • GitHub Guides
  • Pro Git book
  • GitHub Desktop documentation
  • GitHub Education
  • GitHub Copilot

• There are also tons of tutorials on YouTube and other websites
  • GitHub has a nice YouTube channel with tutorials
  • Here is a playlist for beginners
  • And here is a playlist on GitHub Copilot
  • This is a nice video about how to use GitHub Desktop

• Jupyter Notebook is an open-source format that allows you to create documents with code, equations, visualisations, and text
• It is widely used in data science, machine learning, and scientific research
• Jupyter Notebooks can be used with many programming languages, such as Python, R, Julia, and Scala, but it is most commonly used with Python
• You can run code cells, see the output, and save the results in the same document
• They are a great example of literate programming, where you can explain your code and show the results in the same place
• And they are also intuitive and easy to use!

• If you have already installed Anaconda, you have Jupyter on your computer
• You can also use Jupyter Notebooks online with Google Colab
• Although you can create a Jupyter Notebook on Anaconda, I recommend you to use a code editor like VS Code to write your code
• If you want to run it from the command line, you can use the command jupyter notebook in the terminal
• More information about Jupyter Notebooks can be found here, and a tutorial can be found here

• You can write text in Jupyter Notebooks using Markdown
• Markdown is a lightweight markup language that allows you to format text easily
• You can use headings, lists, links, images, tables, and more
• Please refer to one of our tutorials for more information on Markdown
• You can also use LaTeX to write equations in Jupyter Notebooks. More information can be found here

• You can also include figures in Jupyter Notebooks using the following syntax: ![](path/to/figure.png)
• Where path/to/figure.png is the directory and filename of the figure

• You can write code in Jupyter Notebooks using code cells
• It is the same Python code that you would write in a .py file, but with the results displayed below the cell
• You can run the code cells by pressing Shift + Enter or clicking on the Run button
• You can also write comments in the code cells using the # symbol

• This is the tricky part: For Notebooks to compile, you have to connect Anaconda with VS Code and run the Notebook from there
• You can find more detailed instructions in our tutorial, but I will show you the main steps here
• First, you need to install the Python and the Jupyter extensions in VS Code
• Then, you need to select the Python interpreter in the bottom left corner of the screen
• You have to select the base environment in Anaconda
• Finally, you can open a Jupyter Notebook in VS Code and run it from there :)