Hello everyone!<p>In 2020 I was approached by O'Reilly (I am one of the instructors on their online platform) to see if I wanted to work on a book on Git. And not just any book, a Head First book.<p>I have always been a huge fan of Git, and have been using it since 2009. I regularly teach Git at conferences, online platforms like O'Reilly's, and the occasional corporate training gig. So I figured, why not?<p>For those who are familiar with the Head First series, Head First Git is one of the first with a newer and more contemporary L&F. Gone are the stock photos—rather almost all images in the book are illustrations (done by someone at O'Reilly). Also, my book uses a very diverse set of characters in every chapter—we have Sangita, Brigitte, Trinity, Armstrong, Gitanjali and Aref and a few others who'll join you on your trip as you learn Git.<p>For those NOT familiar with the Head First series, IMO it is a truly unique approach to teaching ideas. It uses a very conversational style, with light-hearted narratives woven through every chapter to teach ideas concretely. The books use a variety of techniques to help truly cement ideas—there is a lot of repetition, dozens of hands-on exercises, and lot of quizzes—even crossword puzzles. AFAIK Head First is truly a class of books on its own, though Manning's "grokking" series is one that comes to mind that is attempting to do something similar (and doing so very well).<p>As for the intended audience, I am thinking most HN'ers are NOT the target audience. This book is directed towards folks very new to Git, and the hope is get them to 80% of what they need to know to use Git effectively.<p>My approach in writing this book (despite it targeting beginners) was not only to teach _how_ to use Git, but also _what_ happens when you do things to Git's DAG and the working directory/index/object datastore. The book uses a LOT of visualizations to explain what happens when you add and commit your work, and how operations like merging, reverting/reseting affect the DAG.<p>The book is done, available on O'Reilly's platform if you have an account and now on Amazon. I'd love to hear your feedback if you decide to take a look at it. My email is raju.gandhi @ the biggest search engine company in the word and my twitter is <a href="https://twitter.com/looselytyped" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/looselytyped</a> (DM's are open), LinkedIn is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajugandhi/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajugandhi/</a><p>This is my second book (first one is from Apress) so if anyone here is interested in knowing what it takes to write a book, or in particular a Head First book, I'd happy to share everything I've learned. Feel free to post a comment here, or email/@ me on Twitter or LinkedIn.<p>Finally, a shout out to the awesome community that is Hacker News. I saved dozens of insightful comments, tips/tricks, articles about Git that showed up here and while many of the advanced tricks did not make it into the book, they certainly made me better at Git. Thanks everyone!<p>In case my site gets hugged to death:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Git-Learners-Understanding/dp/1492092517" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Git-Learners-Understanding...</a><p><a href="https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/head-first-git/9781492092506/" rel="nofollow">https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/head-first-git/978...</a>