Git Basics: Plan My First Week With Version Control

Everyone tells you to use Git and nobody shows you how to start without breaking something. This gives you a five-day plan built around your actual project: one concept and one hands-on task each day, covering init, commits, decent commit messages, branching, and the basics that stop a beginner panicking. Practice, not just theory.

I've heard I should be using Git for version control but I've never used it before. I'm currently working on {PROJECT_DESCRIPTION} using {LANGUAGE}.

Please create a practical 5-day plan to get me comfortable with Git fundamentals. For each day, give me one concept to learn and one hands-on task to complete. The plan should cover: initialising a repository, making commits, writing good commit messages, understanding branches, and pushing to a remote repository like GitHub.

For each concept, explain the real-world reason a developer needs it: not just what the command does but why it matters. Include the exact terminal commands I should run each day, with a brief explanation of each flag or argument. By the end of the 5 days, I should have a real project safely version-controlled on GitHub.