This is my response to /2012/04/17/developer-blog-banter-3-show-tell/
Share a single interesting thing you’ve worked with recently. A tool, framework or technology for example.

The coolest thing that I’ve used recently has got to be the combination of https://GitHub.com + Markpad
I had used GitHub frequently in the past as a consumer of data. To download OSS applications to use, or .Net frameworks to include in my projects.

However, recently a tweet caught my attention.

[tweet https://twitter.com/davidfowl/status/188912908778999808]

I realised that my usual workflow when writing a blog post was:

  • write the code examples in the post
  • create a working sample application
  • zip it all up
  • host the the .zip file somewhere for readers to download.

After that the code always went stale and I never updated it. David Fowler got me thinking “He is correct. I really should make it easier for others to pull down my source code. And at the same time make it easier to update for when I use the same code in user group presentations”

I created my first few repositories https://github.com/DavidBurela and uploaded the source code for a Windows Phone 7 application and source code samples from presentations I gave. GitHub makes it really easy to get started and they have a heap of resources to get started.

With my repositories created and ready to share with the world, there was just one thing missing… a proper README file. When someone navigates to your repository, GitHub looks within the repository for a README file, if it finds one it renders and shows it. Its a great way to give people an introduction to what your repository is for. An example can be seen in my WP7 repository https://github.com/DavidBurela/Windows8DeveloperCampPhoneApplication

The README file is written in a format called MarkDown (as opposed to mark up languages). It can be difficult to write the README files without seeing rendered in real time. This is where MarkPad comes in. It is a MarkDown editor with real time previews.

These 2 products have made my life that much easier to share code with the community. It can be difficult configuring your system with Git for the first time. I have included some links below to help you get started. (But it has been rumoured that GitHub are creating GitHub For Windows, similar to their GitHub for mac client. Which should make things much easier in the future)

Links to get started with Git & GitHub

By David Burela