I think we can agree that, for a topic as broad as Javascript, 11 postings is essentially the same as zero

The idea of those corporate videos scare me. I honestly feel worried and even somewhat vulnerable. I just don't see how I could ever handle watching those and not either finding a way to cheat terribly (that involved 0% participation) or just outright refuse and take what comes.

I remember when I was 16 working a 6 month gig as a cook at Applebee's they tried to make us watch corporate kitchen videos. Just imagine the production quality of an Applebee's corporate training video and its worse. Even our asskiss GM couldn't say anything when we refused. Not like he wanted to pay us to watch that bull****.

They're mostly social for me. I don't get out much and the meetings I go to often include eating afterwards, so I feel like I get a drive's worth out of it.

Does anyone else find it easier to learn when drawing things out on a whiteboard?

I just picked up a 6 ft x 4ft whiteboard to hang in my office at home. Should be helpful as I try to learn all the computer engineering stuff I'll be exposed to at work.

Yes that is a legit good idea.

i just use regular a4 papers but yeah drawing stuff out is a must for me

I also have a whiteboard that I use at home. Drawing on paper is fine but I like being able to easily erase parts and redraw and so on.

there's always more paper

Haha I always get super guilty just wasting paper. I don't remember the name of it, but there is a product out there that you can easily write and rewrite on a notebook with a special pen that they sell. It's not suppose to smear.

Anyways, I have been spending a great deal of time learning to use git. Had trouble with my commits since they were having merge conflicts. Each time the project gets updated, I had to learn how to rebase my commits rather than pulling. Supposedly you are suppose to keep your patches on top of master? Rather than using "git pull" you are suppose to "git fetch" and rebase somehow.

My pull request is still opened but the owners asked that I squash my messages since I had way too many commits. Here is what the tree looks like.

A-Master
B-- my commit
C
D
E-- my commit that should be squashed
F-- my commit that should be squashed
G-- my commit that should be squashed
H
I

I feel like I got myself in a huge pickle by not having my commits up at the top of the tree. Anyways going to have to rebase interactively to see if I can shift everything up. I have to admit though, it's kind of scary doing all this.

Hope you enjoy the new job, should be interesting. By all means ask questions here we might be able to help.

Create a backup first. That's as simple as git checkout -b mybranchbackup

Then do any rebasing on the original branch.

so far I haven't seen a great use case for rebasing. It gains very little unless you're working in the same section of files as the rest of your team. Someone correct me if I'm wrong or missing something

There are definitely a lot of nits out there with regard to commit messages syntax, structure, number etc

Yea well I screwed that up. I did a rebase, moving my commits on top of the branch and started a pull request. Was expecting github to state that I was only wanting to merge 1 commit, but instead it stated I wanted 33. Yikes. Lesson learned the hard way, should of created a backup branch.

Speaking of git, are there any decent merge programs out there ?

Don't know git specific ones, but I personally liked Beyond Compare a lot. Did complicated merges on the side then committed the final product.

On a similar note, does anyone else here get a lot out of highlighting books? Especially dense text books upwards of 500 pages? I find that it helps me tremendously just to go through and highlight the important points, ignoring examples and filler material. I know that there's no consensus on the effectiveness of highlighting though. I think it just works for some people and doesn't work for others.

Barrin6,

You could do something like this, let's say you're working on your forked version:

Add the main repo as an upstream
Keep it updated
Also for better commit messages use git add -p.

I've been highlighting parts in my recent swift ios development book that I purchased and I think it helps for when I'll be going back to the book definitely.

I don't think I gain anything besides the above by highlighting and if I want to remember something; I just write it many types on paper.

When I had a cube and desk space I used a large sketch pad as my portable white board for drawing stuff out or taking lots of notes. Then we all moved into one big room with very little desk space and I couldn't use it anymore...

i've started a mind map for c++ as I'm going through the topic in school. haven't kept it up very well over the course of the class, but now that the semester is over I'm going back and adding relevant info from each chapter and section.

Sort of a similar fashion, too; ignore the examples and fluff and extract those little juicy tidbits that best explain the topic.

getting to the point of drawing connecting lines between related subjects or methods will be interesting, as I'm not really doing the book in order

I'll be walking in to my first day at work in about ten minutes. I'm nervous and I never get nervous.

You just don't know what to expect, I get that. The acronyms used at the company will be the biggest challenge starting out. Ask questions about what they mean.

@anais - I like it.

For OO development regarding Composition vs. Inheritance I would guess most development projects prefer composition but not sure. Digging through legacy C++ code with inherited base classes is tedious.

inheritance actually starts the second section of c++ classes at my college. was hoping to knock out a few of those chapters over the month off, assuming I get this mind map ( / review ) completed

@kato

day one should be "meet the CEO", and other bland pleasantries, like chatting with HR about holidays and bomb threat procedures

unless you've already gone through all that stuff

The worst is having to poop early on at a new job.

Hilarious

The little desk space would infuriate me.

For me at least its not at all the same.

For example one of the common things I draw out are sequence diagrams* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_diagram). It's much easier to be able to keep modifying an existing diagram then it is to start from scratch each time on a new piece of paper or have tons of squiggles/crossed out stuff on the page.

* But without the bull**** UML crap.