Originally published on CodingCush .

Git and GitHub are not the same thing, even though their names sound almost identical. Git is a free tool that runs on your own computer and keeps track of every change you make to your files. GitHub is a website that stores your Git projects online so you can share them, back them up and work on them with other people. In short: Git is the tool, GitHub is the place where the tool's work lives online. You can use Git completely on your own without ever touching GitHub, but you cannot really use GitHub without Git doing the actual version tracking underneath.

Beginners mix the two up all the time, and honestly, it is an easy mistake to make. People say "I pushed my code to Git" when they mean GitHub, or "download GitHub" when they mean the Git software.…