As open source software is becoming more important in the world of software engineering, so too is the need for configuration management and the advancement of more opportunities to maintain these software systems over the net. Not only is it beneficial for maintenance, it provides different perspectives from other members on keeping projects error-free and optimal. With the latest tool for configuration management, Github has provided many software engineers with the opportunity to easily manage their projects, even with separate people working on them at the same time. Unlike before where members could only work on separate copies of the same project, Github allows for simultaneous commits to a master file, making it faster and more reliable.
I have used another configuration management tool for git called Bitbucket when doing assignments for ICS 211. From what I experienced, it was a much faster way of getting the TA to look at your code then going through the process of compressing the java files and sending them through Laulima. It just takes getting used to, with learning how to commit and understanding what branches and other terminology are. With Github, it is much easier to have an overview of the repositories, and accessing them is very simple. As I learn how to use Github through browser, app, or command line, I feel it will be beneficial to me in the future as a computer science major.
As I haven’t had much experience or knowledge of either git or Github, it is hard to say whether one is popular because of the other. However, I do think that without git, Github wouldn’t have been available. And without Github, git could have possibly not have been as well-known as it is today. There are other git platforms that are less established than Github. What matters overall is that git has come so far that Github, along with all the other git services, have pushed the software engineering community to a new era of configuration management, and a better one at that.