Understanding GitHub and Markdown

Notes from walkthrough Saturday, 2023-10-07 with @audreyfeldroy @pydanny @ProfessorTerrence @HistorianRose

What is GitHub?

GitHub is for:

#. Code collaboration and version control #. Documentation and knowledge sharing #. Project management for software teams

What is Markdown?

Markdown is:

#. A lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax #. Can be converted to HTML/XHTML and other formats #. Often used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums, and to create rich text using a plain text editor

Markdown files end with the extension .md or .markdown.

We use what is called “GitHub Flavored Markdown” (GFM) which is a superset of standard Markdown. GFM is described in this guide.