machine learning

10 GitHub Features That You Are Missing Out On

October 7, 2024

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In this blog, we will explore the feature that keeps drawing me back to GitHub, turning it into a complete ecosystem for my coding and data projects. Beyond code sharing, you can host your own website for free, integrate AI throughout the development process, use a cloud IDE, conduct interactive code reviews, search for new tools in the marketplace, set branch rules, use GitHub Desktop, and more.

1. GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces offers a fully configured, cloud-based development environment that allows you to start coding without the hassle of setting up your local environment. It is similar to VSCode, but it runs in the cloud and allows you to sync your settings and download extensions quickly. Codespaces can be accessed from any device with internet access, making it a versatile tool for developers on the go. Whether you are at home or traveling, you can access your project, work on it, and even deploy your application using Codespaces.

2. GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is powered by AI and helps you in the code editor, browser, CLI, GitHub Mobile, and inline chat, offer prompt suggestions, and generates commit messages in real-time. It significantly speeds up your coding process by providing context-aware suggestions, offering an entire ecosystem of AI assistance to help you at every stage of your development process.

3. GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions automates software development workflows by allowing you to build, test, and deploy your code directly from GitHub. You can also run workflows based on any GitHub event. I use this feature for MLOps, DataOps, and LLMOps. It helps me test my code, check for dependencies, format my code, train my models, evaluate the results, and based on the results, deploy the model. Setting it up is very easy compared to some local solutions like Jenkins.

4. GitHub Pages

With GitHub Pages, you can create and publish websites directly from a GitHub repository. This feature is perfect for hosting project documentation, blogs, resumes, and portfolios. I use it to deploy my Data Science portfolio, my writing portfolio, and my side project website. I have even set up the domain name so that people can just type abidaliawan.com and view my website that is hosted completely for free on GitHub. It only took me a few hours to set it up.

5. Code Review Assignments

I recently discovered this feature: You assign a team member to review a pull request. The assigned person easily reviews the changes and comments on them. Eventually, they approve the pull request to be merged. This type of code review helps the team avoid bad code from being merged. You can even help your team by commenting on the changes made and helping them correct those mistakes.

6. GitHub Marketplace

The GitHub Marketplace offers a wide range of tools and integrations that can enhance your development workflow. From CI/CD tools to project management apps, the marketplace provides solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into your GitHub projects, helping you to streamline your processes and improve productivity. I have integrated a lot of apps and actions that I discovered from the marketplace; most of them are free, and I use them to improve my workflow, especially for searching for security issues in my repositories and reducing file sizes.

7. Protected Branches

Protected Branches are a helpful feature that preserves the integrity of your code by preventing unauthorized changes. You can enforce rules such as requiring pull request reviews before merging, ensuring that only thoroughly reviewed code is integrated into your main branch. Additionally, you can set rules for any branch, making it necessary for team members to follow specific steps to merge the code. This feature has made my life easier.

8. GitHub Discussions

We can use the “Issues” tab to report bugs or request features. However, GitHub Discussions provides a dedicated space for your community to come together, ask and answer questions, and have open-ended conversations that are not related to current development. This feature fosters community engagement and can be a valuable alternative to Discord or Slack.

9. GitHub Explore

GitHub Explore helps you discover new and trending projects, repositories, events, topics, and educational resources. It provides personalized recommendations based on your interests and activity, making finding projects that align with your skills and passions easier. I use it to find viral projects on LLMs and AI and also look for really good projects from which I can learn.

10. GitHub Mobile, Desktop Apps, and CLI

GitHub offers mobile and desktop applications that allow you to manage your repositories on the go. These apps provide a user-friendly interface for reviewing code, merging pull requests, and staying updated on your projects. Additionally, the GitHub CLI brings GitHub to the command line, allowing you to manage issues and pull requests directly from your terminal. You can control your entire GitHub profile through the GitHub CLI tool. These tools are lifesavers for beginners as they just have to use the UI and run some commands to initiate workflow runs.

Conclusion

GitHub is more than just a code-sharing platform. Its advanced features can significantly enhance your development workflow, improve collaboration, and ensure the security and quality of your code. By leveraging tools like GitHub Codespaces, GitHub Pages, Code Review, and the GitHub mobile and desktop apps, you can transform your coding experience.

These features have been life-changing for me, streamlining tasks that used to take hours into mere minutes. Whether you’re resolving issues from the comfort of your bed with a mobile in hand or deploying a website seamlessly, these tools empower you to work smarter, not harder.

Abid Ali Awan (@1abidaliawan) is a certified data scientist professional who loves building machine learning models. Currently, he is focusing on content creation and writing technical blogs on machine learning and data science technologies. Abid holds a Master’s degree in technology management and a bachelor’s degree in telecommunication engineering. His vision is to build an AI product using a graph neural network for students struggling with mental illness.