Overview
Version control addresses two different risks:
- History risk: A useful earlier version may be lost when files are overwritten.
- Collaboration risk: Multiple people may create different versions of the same project on separate computers.
Git reduces history risk by preserving commits. GitHub reduces collaboration risk by giving the team a shared remote repository.
The distinction also prevents a common conceptual error. A local commit does not automatically appear on GitHub. Committing saves work to the local repository. Pushing sends those commits to a remote repository. These are separate actions in separate locations.