Github Gists - Making Code Sharing Pretty

ITEC 4230 Data Science and Analytics Project,
Anca Doloc-Mihu and Cengiz Gunay

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What is Gist?

Gist is an easy method to share snippets or excerpts of data or code with others in a clean and reader friendly way.

A gist can be a snippet of code, a bash script, notes, to do lists, or some other small piece of data hosted by GitHub as a repository.

A gist can be either public or secret.

Gists are free and easy to create to create and store on GitHub. You can add a new gist, modify, and delete files and code entirely from within your browser. Lastly, there is no need to download or install a program to use gist.

Using gist has all the benefits of utilizing a GitHub repository, and also provides a more lightweight way of utilizing GitHub’s versioning features.

What is the difference between Github and Gist?

The main differences between github and gists are in terms of

type of project
Gist is a simple way to display code snippets and pastes, and share them with others (public) or not (private). It is used when you need to share a sample piece of code or technique with your co-workers or friends. It is more like a memo.

GitHub provides a platform to share an entire project as a repo among a team (private repo) or to the whole world (public repo). It’s more for big projects like a dynamic website or mobile applications.

What is the difference between Github and Gist?

The main differences between github and gists are in terms of

type of project
number of features: Github is designed many features and flexibility in mind, which is a good fit for both small and very big projects, while Gists are only a good fit for very small projects.
user interface: Gists do support multi-files, but the interface is very simple, and they’re limited in features, so they don’t even have a file browser, nor issues, pull requests or wiki, unlike Github.

Developing Gists

To start docuemtation Create Gists
Many operations all available at the official Github documentation Gists
A step by step tutorial: Github Gists 101: Making Code Sharing Pretty
Some hints on working with Gists Little Known Ways To Utilize GitHub Gists

Have fun building some Gists for your projects!