Are you having students use a GUI, or command-line?

[afeld]

Which do you use to introduce them to Git? Do you give an in-class demonstration, or simply point them to online resources?

[blake41]

We do in class demonstrations as well as having students use online resources prior to attending in person instruction.

[blake41]

We only use the command line, i hate the GUI's with the exception of GitX which is fabulous as a viewing tool.

[hpssjellis]

Online GUI all the way. As far as my programming class is concerned, the GUI is only a pain when you need to make a new folder or add an image.

[hpssjellis]

Oops. I am confusing online browser with Github GUI and command line. I use all three but prefer the online browser. The latest version of the GUI is confusing. Depends what the point of the course is.

[knmnyn]

Command line. This is because our students use a variety of different platforms and end up choosing different clients anyways, especially when they consider IDEs in the mix too.

[Drealmer]

Been intensively using Visual Studio 2013 with 75+ students over the last few months. The out-of-the-box Git integration of MSVC 2013 is working fine, I am really happy with it.

[thomasjbradley]

We primarily use the GitHub App, and the only time we jump into the command line is for using Jekyll. But even then the students use the app for Git-related tasks.

Our students are extremely visual, being graphic design students, and the command line is a weird, empty, black box. I’ve found in the past that it just becomes a hinderance to their learning of version control topics—I feel it’s more of an advanced way of doing things that I only mention to them.

[rodymiddelkoop]

Most of the time students use built-in git features from Eclipse or IntelliJ. In some cases we use SourceTree or the git command line, especially for branching and debugging ssh issues. I'd rather have them work on the command-line only to really understand how git works, but that's quite hard for junior developers.

[rgdonohue]

I'm teaching an introduction to JavaScript programming course to non-CSS majors who have never used command line. They'll be pulling down updates from the course repo, and pushing their assignments up to their own repos. We're starting with the GitHub Desktop GUI for ease and simplicity. Will likely move into command line later.

[MargarethaAnne]

This semester I used Git and GitHub in the classroom for the first time. For my foundations level course, we used the GitHub website and I introduced them to some very basic concepts associated with it. Mostly I wanted them to run their eyes across it regularly. For my upper level course, we used the command line. We took it pretty slow, and I pointed to a lot of reading material if they wanted to take it further faster. We learned basic terminal commands first, and then eased into Git. We started working with local repos first, branching and merging locally. Then I had an experimental repository where students could practice pushing and pulling.... Next time I would definitely do more visualization of what is going on....

[ebonakdarian]

I plan to use Git and GitHub together, and we'll be using only the command line for Git since it's consistent across platforms. In fact we'll do our intro to Git/GitHub under Windows 7, but then move on to Linux (both Ubuntu and Raspian) - so the experience (and things learned) should transfer nicely.