Articles
Becoming more productive while working less
I don’t have time to learn.
Many people say that to themselves. I say that to myself too.
I haven’t learned much this year because I was on a tight schedule to create content. I had to create one article and one video every week for the blog. I also had to create as many Learn JavaScript lessons as I can.
And I was almost burned out. I was unhappy and depressed.
Learning is important to me. When I don’t learn, I start to feel guilty.
One day, I decided enough was enough. I had to change up my schedule to allow time for learning. I did some experiments over the next few weeks and found a way where I could give myself 1.5 hours to learn every day. The best part is, I created even more content than I did before!
I want to share with you my experiment and how I tweaked my schedule to allow time for learning. I hope it’ll help you find some time to learn as well.
Managing your Git branches with Git Flow
How do you manage your git branches if you have many of them? For this, we have a well-known method called the Git flow.
It contains five types of branches:
- The production branch
- The develop branch
- Feature branches
- Release branches
- Hotfix branches
We’ll go into what each type of branches do and how to create them in this lesson.
When will Learn JavaScript be completed?
The most common question I get about Learn JavaScript is: “When will Learn JavaScript be complete?”
If you don’t know, Learn JavaScript is my flagship JavaScript course. You can find out more about the course here.
The best answer I could come up with was: “I don’t know”.
I hated myself for saying that.
I’ve been writing Learn JavaScript since last August. I promised myself a certain deadline twice. And I failed to hit the deadline twice. I feel ashamed for creating content so slowly.
I came to a point where I’m scared to promise a deadline. I don’t want to disappoint my students. I don’t want to disappoint myself either.
But I realize that I can’t say “I don’t know” to students who already bought the course. They have a right to know. So today, I’m going to overcome my fear and provide you with a proper estimate.
What is a branch in Git?
Note: This the seventh video in the Git for beginners series. Watch the first video here.
Imagine there are parallel worlds. We have:
- A world where I have created this video, and you’re watching it.
- A world where I have created this video, but you’re not watching it.
- A world where I did not create this video.
In this parallel world concept, a Git branch is a parallel world.
You can have a branch that stays the same in one world. Then, you branch off into a different world. Once you finish your code, you can complete the initial world by merging the changes into it.
Changing my refund policy
When I launched Learn JavaScript in July 2018, I used a refund policy that says:
“I’m happy to refund your money if you don’t manage to learn JavaScript through this course. Send me an email within 60 days, show me you did your homework and I’ll send your money back.”
I want to let you know that I’m changing to a new refund policy. I want to tell you about the new policy, and why I’m changing it.
Resolving Git conflicts
Note: This the sixth video in the Git for beginners series. Watch the first video here.
Let’s say a friend of made a change to your repository and pushed the changes to the Git remote. At the same time, you also made a change to the same line of code.
When you pull their changes into your local repository, you’ll notice that there is a conflict.
This happens because Git no idea whether their version is the updated version or your version is the updated version.
This is what we call a Git conflict.
You’ll learn how to resolve a Git conflict today.
:empty and :blank
I made a terrible mistake when I tweeted about :empty and :blank a month ago. I said that :empty wasn’t useful, and :blank is much more useful than :empty.
I was wrong!
:empty is actually good enough. We don’t even need :blank!
Cloning a Git repository
Note: This the fifth video in the Git for beginners series. Watch the first video here.
Let’s say you want to work on a project together with a friend. The two of you will be creating commits on the same project.
Let’s also say your friend has created the project. They initialized a repository on Github.
What you need to do next is to copy the project from the remote to your computer.
In Git, you can do this through a Git Clone.
What makes a good frontend developer?
The frontend development industry is getting confusing nowadays. More people think that frontend developers are people with great JavaScript skills.
But there’s more to frontend development than JavaScript.
And as professional frontend developers, we need to understand what our jobs are.
Pulling from a Git remote
Note: This the fourth video in the Git for beginners series. Watch the first video here.
When you make a change to a local repository, you can push a change to a Git remote. Likewise, when the remote gets changed, you can pull the changes back to your local repository.
Today, you’ll learn how to do the pull from the remote back to your repository.