Git Like a Relationship Gone Wrong

Claudio Grassi
6 min readMar 19, 2021

Using Git can sometimes seem a little daunting. When you begin to talk about branching, merging, cloning and comparisons, you‘re only scratching the surface of the power of version control. Becoming adept at it, like any other skill takes education and practice.

Our new Unity project has been created. We have also created our online repository and linked it to our project files. At this point we will cover the basic first steps to create our first commit and thus conclude our preparations before getting to work on our game.

Like a relationship gone wrong?!

Metaphorically speaking we can use this relationship idea to help us remember the basics of the process. Bear with me for a second and keep the following in mind:

  1. Pull
  2. Add
  3. Commit
  4. Push

So picture this:

You meet someone new. They make you feel on top of the world and all you want to do is PULL them closer to you. You want to take everything they are and have and merge yourself with them. However, you’re not selfish. No. You know you also have to ADD to this relationship. You add all the things the other does not yet have. Before you know it, you’re on one knee ready to COMMIT professing your vows which you have painstakingly written down.

Alas, you soon realize that this may have gone as far as it can go. Maybe they’re not the person you thought they were. Maybe it was too rushed. Maybe you’re now too similar to actually be interesting. For whatever reason you now realize you want to PUSH them away. You set them free into the world to be their own person so that you may continue to do what you do and explore new experiences. A story as old as time…and yet, you know you’ll be calling them again at 4am on a Wednesday morning after a long night of work and one too many drinks…hey, you’re just human. And so the cycle goes on.

I think you get the idea, but how does it work in actual practice? Lets take it one step at a time.

Claudio Grassi

Experienced digital artist, Unity game developer & coder with a knack for problem solving and a passion for video games.