I normally consider myself pretty handy with computers, but I’m no programmer. I know GitHub is primarily for programmers, but I often find GitHub pages when looking for specific programs, and always end up walking away frustrated because anything I try to download just gives me a whole bunch of unfamiliar file-names and what I’m guessing is some uncompiled data? I really don’t know, and it just confuses me what I’m supposed to do in order to actually execute files I find on GitHub? I’ve heard something about Python and something about Cmd (Is that Windows Command Line Prompt?) and whenever I look up tutorials or guides for GitHub I find primer videos for programmers, not user friendly newbie guides for people who just want to download a piece of software.
In: Technology
> and what I’m guessing is some uncompiled data?
Github is a website that hosts source code. You will generally need a compiler or interpreter to be able to run that code. There are lots of different programming languages and build systems in use so there’s no one set of instructions that will work – you need to read the documentation for the project, which usually explains the steps needed to get it running.
> I’ve heard something about Python
Python is a programming language. To run a program that’s written in Python you need a Python interpreter, which may come preinstalled depending on what OS you have.
> something about Cmd (Is that Windows Command Line Prompt?)
Yes.
> whenever I look up tutorials or guides for GitHub I find primer videos for programmers
If you look up a “guide for Github” you’re probably going to find instructions on how to use Github’s UI and/or the Git version control system that it’s based on. How to compile and run a program doesn’t have to do with Github itself – Github is just a hosting service for code.
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