Use Git and Github

 When working to a software you should try its design at best, then write your code with or without an IDE and finally check and test your code. Let’s for the moment skip the check and test question which has its own development and concentrate on the first phases of your work. Your design was good but your coding goes trough various modifications and, sometimes, you get lost. That is the time to use a Version Control System, a tool that allows you to recover older versions of your code and track your code history.  This is what summarizes this nice and free course on Coursera.   A VCS is a highly recommended tool even if you work alone. there are many of VCSs but here we concentrate our attention on Git, the free and open source VCs designed and implemented by Linus Torvalds also knows as the initial developer  of the Linux OS and maintainer of its kernel. If you are one who prefer to read books, there is at least one open book on Git, and you can find it here. Otherwise, the Coursera videos are certainly worth to be seen. Coursera does not only introduces Git  but also Github, but we will be back on it later. An interesting short introduction to both Git and Github can be found in this short tutorial. However, if you want to face the topics orderly, please first complete the video lectures. 

Git is not useful when you just work alone but when you want to share your work with other. In this case you have to chose a repository and Github is exactly what you are looking for (also for repositories there  are alternatives but among the many we have chosen the more popular for Open Source Software). In this case you have to lear what Github is, how it works and how to send and document your code over there. The Coursera videos and the tutorial help you in this task.  Obviously if a VCS is important when you work alone, it is much more important when you work in a group where potentially many people cooperate simultaneously to the same project. The videos and the documentation cover also these case. Best practice are important (see also here)!

The above resources introduce you to the command line use of Git but eventually you want to do it inside a IDE. Because I and most of my collaborators use Eclipse (for Java programming) I also address you to the Lars Vogel tutorial where it is shown how to use EGit.  Other valuable resources are this and these other ones.