While doing something in Python, I use Git to track versions and branches on each project. These three shortcuts have saved me some typing in the shell:
alias g='git status'
alias gl='git log'
alias gd='git diff'
g displays the current branch name and which files are modified, or simply:
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)
gl displays the commit log, which I check before doing a commit to standardize the messages. gl -p shows the diffs for each commit in the log, and gl somefilepath shows the commit log for that file or the files inside a folder. Combine the last two for the history of changes on a given file or folder.
gd shows the changes, I use it a lot to check if enough modifications have been done and it is time for a commit.