Version Control

Before this I was using Git as a backup tool — just committing everything to main with messages like "fix" or "update". I knew it was wrong but didn't know what right looked like.

Learning branching strategy (feature branches, PR reviews, merge vs rebase) transformed how I work. I started treating every personal project as if a team might read my commits, which made me write better commit messages.

GitHub Actions was the bonus revelation. Seeing CI run automatically on a push made the DevOps world feel suddenly accessible rather than mysterious.