A few years ago I gave up on web developing. I was simply burnt out and frustrated as the economy was taking a nose dive, facebook (Cheap means of getting business online) was dominating the brick and mortar simple websites, having estimates passed on because their nephew was good with computer (translation: he knew how to use Microsoft Frontpage or apple iWeb).
I was so burnt out I didn’t even want to code for my own brick and mortar store The Animal House. I purchased a boxed php e-commerce solution, PinnacleCart, and just did the data entry. The cart works, and serves it’s purpose… However, I keep finding myself wanting to do things with the cart. I found I was truly missing the excitement that code creation brings.
This past July I started getting back in the game, taking a few small jobs and trying to get up to speed on newer practices, methods and tools. I was surprised how far behind just a few years could make me feel like a caveman thawed from prehistoric times in the tech world. Immediately confronted with newer practices that I hadn’t really even heard of. The first one being Git introduced to me by after commenting, “I wish there was a way for me to easily work from my computer at work, and still have access to the files I was working on at home.” There is a way to do that with FTP, however it is very costly in a web developers largest commodity, time. For me, with two kids, three dogs and a full time retail business, time is a HUGE commodity, and Git is not only a tremendous time saver, it is a safer way to handle your coding, staging and production environment.
Anyone who started doing websites in the long long ago in the dark ages of ftp has had an “Oh $#!&” moment, a moment in time when you are working on a live server and uploaded code, and just as you go to preview the changes, you see the server error message on the screen and at that precise moment, the phone starts ringing, your messenger alert starts sounding off. Your heart pounding, as you wonder which part of your code that you just uploaded turned your server into fubar. If only there was a away to revert your changes. If only I could have tested this before I uploaded that code I have been working on for the last hour. Well with a combination of Git and MAMP our children, who grow up to be web developers, will never have to experience that moment.
There are many more technologies that I have been working on, but Git is definitely the most “Life Changing” tool out there for web developers right now. I have only scraped the surface of it, and feel this strongly about it already. It’s not the easiest thing to pick up if you come from an FTP mind set, but once you start “Git”ting it will change your process in a very positive light.
If you are looking for way to learn more about Git. There are tutorials all over the web, but I have found Code School’s trygit to be an excellent starting point.
Other Great Resources for Git and other technologies
Just got my hands on the fantastic editor Coda2, and the first thing I did was go to work on the 
Coda 2 could definitely use some other features, and maybe a bit better Git support… However this is a big jump for me personally coming from dreamweaver. Not that I couldn’t do anything with dreamweaver that I now do with Coda2, but the work flow output is just a thousand times better.