Bioinformatics typically requires collaboration between multiple people with different expertise. In such a collaboration, each person should explore independently using everything their colleagues have contributed, and then be able to easily merge different people's explorations. It is vital not to lose track of steps that someone in the project explored in the past, which may turn out to be very valuable in the future. Since all these activities imply "multiple versions of the same thing", they can lead to chaos and confusion if not managed well. Fortunately, powerful new "distributed version control systems" like Git completely solve these problems, and can genuinely transform how you collaborate with others on code, data analysis, and writing. Starting with simple examples, I'll give you a quick tutorial that will get you up to speed on how to use git in your own work. To make this useful for you, we have set up a new git service for all members of UCLA Bioinformatics, so you can immediately put your new skills to use for both private and public collaborations, using this new service. I want to emphasize that this is not just for software developers. These are fundamental tools for anyone who "produces new information", particularly in collaborations with others.
