Git + SQL

Objectives

Introduction to Git
Introduction to SQL
Exercises for self-study

Topics

Git is the version control system these days: We learn what it is and how to use it
Plenty of simply examples for you to try
Starting from 'git as a time machine' allowing access to earlier versions of files
Branches from simple 'will this work' to separating alternate work
Next are merging, then remote operations, pull requests
We also get to GitHub, the most promiment and visible hosting site
GitHub enables social coding and collaboration
SQL (Structured Query Language) is maybe the most common data processing language
We will learn the basics of relational daya and schema
SQL commands: select; where; select distinct; select limit
SQL command join and its variants for combining table
SQL command group by for grouped operations

Core Material

Lecture Slides

Lecture 7 (2025): Git I (and first_steps.sh example code)
Lecture 8 (2025): Git II (and branching.sh example code)
Lecture 9 (2025): SQL I (and SQLite examples.tar.gz and DuckDB examples.tar.gz)
Lecture 10 (2025): SQL II (and SQLite examples.tar.gz and DuckDB examples.tar.gz)

Lecture Videos

The core videos which complement the slides are the (now captioned) versions of the 2021 course. As the captions may obstruct some of the displayed code, we also show the uncaptioned original versions.

Video 10 (2025): Week 4 (Box), also Video 10 (2025, captioned) (ClassTranscribe)
Video 11 (2021): Git 'first steps' (Box, captioned) (and first_steps.sh example code), also Video 11 (2021): Git 'first steps' (uncaptioned)
Video 12 (2021): Git 'branching' (Box, captioned) (and branching.sh example code), also Video 12 (2021): Git 'branching' (uncaptioned)
Video 13 (2021): Git 'fork and pull request' (Box, captioned), also Video 13 (2021): Git 'fork and pull request' (uncaptioned)
Video 14 (2024): Week 5 (Box) also Videso 14 (2025, captioned) (ClassTranscribe)
Video 15 (2021): SQL and SQLite Intro (Box, captioned), also Video 15 (2021) (Box)
Video 16 (2021): SQL JOIN and GROUP BY (Box, captioned), also Video 16 (2021) (Box)

Extras

Extra Reading Suggestions

List of Git Tutorials
git guide (by Roger Dudler)
Happy Git With R (by Jenny Bryan et al)
Visual Git Guide
ohshitgit.com survival tips
SQL tutorial and 'sandbox for code'
Another SQL tutorial
The Rise of SQL short (Aug 2022) IEEE Spectrum piece
'SQL Teaching' tutorial
Some 'Fun facts about SQLite' (Dec 2024)

Further References

The SQLite site
The DuckDB site

Julia Evans

A few of her comics made it onto the lecture slides. Here are some more related to these lectures:

git

These are a bit more advanced than things we covered.

SQL

Some of these are a bit more advanced than things we covered.