Git is the version-control system developers use every day — and it shows up in conversations about code, security, and collaboration constantly. This episode breaks down Git's history, the mental model that makes it click, and the vocabulary you need to actually follow along.

AI-generated (NotebookLM) audio overview. Source: HexLocal in-house research — Git Fluency for Non-Developers (Dr. Priya Nair).

- Git was written in roughly two weeks in 2005, after a licensing dispute left the Linux kernel project without its version-control tool — and that emergency origin shaped every design decision

- The core idea: Git stores snapshots of your whole project at a point in time, not a list of changes — think save points in a video game, not tracked edits in a document

- That snapshot model gives Git two powerful properties: nothing already recorded can be silently altered, and you can almost always work without a network connection

- The episode covers the vocabulary developers use in normal speech — commits, branches, rebasing, pull requests — so you can follow a technical conversation without needing to touch a terminal

- GitHub is a layer on top of Git, not the same thing; the episode explains where Git ends and GitHub begins

- Git also functions as an audit and security instrument, not just a coding tool — the history it creates has real implications outside engineering