Git has significantly changed the way teams develop software. Its distributed nature and lightweight branching and merging have made it possible for developers to massage their code bases in ways they couldn’t have imagined before. However, Git has a reputation for being hard to learn. And when folks transition to Git, they often settle for using a handful of commands and treat Git just like their other source control system. But because of its different approach to source control issues, many of the techniques and terminology we have learned in other source control systems do not translate cleanly when using Git. To begin to use Git effectively, you need to understand the underlying concepts.

In this 49-minute screencast, Jim Weirich takes you on a journey of how you might design and build a source control system from scratch. Along the way you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the first principles behind systems like Git, so things begin to make more sense.

This screencast is a great introduction to the principles of source control, for developers and managers alike! No prior experience with Git or other source control systems is required.