That Is Great! Being Able To State Positive Things About Yourself Is A Really Great Skill! Honestly,

That is great! Being able to state positive things about yourself is a really great skill! Honestly, it is good for your mental health and outlook!

Study affirmations

🏹 Studying is very easy for me.

🏹 People are always in awe of how easily I'm able to understand and retain information and get good marks.

🏹 I'm the smart friend in the friend group.

🏹 I study multiple courses at a time and yet score perfectly.

🏹 I'm a genius.

🏹 I'm a prodigy even though i didn't realise it until recently.

🏹 I thought I was an average student but i didn't realise how easy it is for me to study and get great marks.

🏹 Everyone idolizes me when it comes to being an idol student.

🏹 People are in awe of my knowledge.

🏹 I study when I'm tired because it helps me relax.

🏹 I do not waste my time.

🏹 I sometimes even hyperfocus on my course because it's so damn interesting!

🏹 I'm the Queen/King who always fascinates people with my presence.

Love you. ❤️

I just downloaded a program, as a git repository. It allowed you to have it work in several different ways. Which was achieved by simply using "git checkout" to check out whatever branch you want. I love it. That is so smart!

AHHHH!

Have to do a code review of a codebase I have had access to for 2 days... by copy... As in, I do not yet have access to the reposetory, as so cannot build the project... And so none of my tools work on it... Because massive anxiety an autism, and my supervisor asked if it was ok to have it today (Friday), rather than on Monday and so my mouth just said the words it figured the other person in the conversation wanted to hear... I do not have access to the internal communication tools either so... juuuust have to do it..... AHHHHHHHHH! I swear... I am so happy I went on tumblr, because I am just using the "Do it alone, do it scared" as a freaking mantra at this point...

(Also, sorry for not answering people or being super active... I am just focusing as much as I can on this internship)

FINALLY got done with the Beginners guide to GIT

So a long time ago I made a poll to help me make a Begginers guide to GIT because a lot of people seem to have trouble with it. https://www.tumblr.com/moose-mousse/722172571753365504/going-to-make-a-getting-started-with-git-post?source=share

And I know for a fact that my University taught it horribly. (Or rather... did not teach it at all)

I REALLY tried making this guide as short as I possibly could. Explaining only what you need to know, while trying to clarify what most people find confusing. But it still is too long for a single post. So, I have split it into 5. The post each links to each other, so you should be able to go back and forth easily.

This guide is going to be pure GIT done via the command line. 2 reasons for this:

1: GIT GUI’s are really handy, but they abstracts away a lot of the newbie help GIT is trying to give you. Bitbucket, Github, Jira, and other services use GIT but usually add extra bits that are specific to them. So to know how they are different, it is smartest to learn pure GIT first. And since they are 99% GIT, you will be able to use them with no/little trouble.

2: Because I use the command line, it is easy to build your own automation tools. Simply have a program write git commands to the shell and/or read outputs from git commands and use them to visualize whatever you want, however you want. That way you can have whatever shiney graphics your heart can code up. All the tools you can find (Like Github desktop or gitk) are simply doing this. (incidentally, if any of you make a pretty visualization of GIT? Show me! I wanna see a dog themed GIT graph! I wanna see pink log outputs! Make it yours!)

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care?

Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts

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A beginners guide to GIT: Part 2 - Concepts and terms

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. <-------- You are here Part 3: How to

Part 3: How to learn GIT after (or instead of ) this guide.

Part 4: How to use GIT as 1 person

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A beginners guide to GIT: Part 4 - How to use GIT as 1 person

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. Part 3: How to learn GIT after (or in

Part 5: How to use GIT as a group.

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A beginners guide to GIT: Part 5 - How to use GIT as a group.

Table of content: Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. Part 3: How to lea

Designing systems with bad Implicit requirements. (Or "How to hire people")

So I have now been searching for a job for half a year. And my conclusions are: 1: Firms have no idea what they are doing. Everyone seems to make decisions based on "What does everyone else seem to be doing" and "How do we usually do it" 2: Your ability to do the job you are applying for have just about 0% relevance in your ability to GET the job you are applying for. I am a system designer. And when I get exposed to the same system many times, I start analysing it... it is basically habit at this point. And so, I analyse the hiring system. And so far, in all the interviews I have been to I have been asked 0 technical questions about the position I was interviewing for. 0! And the little feedback from my many many rejections, was that I am not experienced enough. That is weird. Because they are making a judgement on how skilled I am... while not at all asking about or testing my skills. And yesterday I finished my internship (Which is a polite way of saying "Whored myself out for 0 pay in desperation"), and I was in a room with 6 other developers, who was all programming in C++ And I now know that I was the best person at C++ in that room. Better at designing with C++, building architecture with it, knowing the intricacies of the language, and knowing tiny weird little details of the language. (Most of the others had different things they were better at. More experience working with the specific hardware and codebase at the job, better at 3D simulations and so on) So I know for a fact I am skilled. But the system that is build with these interviews mean that skills do not count. Someone with terrible skills who had done bad work at their student job for a year or two, is considered better than someone with great skills who have focused on their studies and not yet worked. Or said in another way. There is an implicit specification in the system design that "Being good at the job, does not matter" So since that is frustrating as hell, and I need to interact with it to stop my brain exploding, lets design a better system. First of all, the OBVIOUS (That... I have seen exactly 1 firm do):

Blind recruitment.

The system will have to have humans make the judgement of who to call into interviews, and who to hire. And humans are stupid little monkeys with brains with software that is just layers covering for the flaws of other layers. Yes, that also means you. And yes, that also means me. We are biased. You can try to constantly evaluate yourself, be aware of your biases and minimize them, but they cannot be removed. Science ( as in, the entire field , have tried for several hundred years and is only "meh" at it So how do we deal with that? We remove the info that is not needed, and can ONLY lead to bias. A person making a judgement if a candidate should be called in for a interview should not know the candidates gender, name, age, skin color, religion or any other information we can remove that have no value when it comes to figuring out if that person will be good at their job. You may think "Hey wait a minute. Age DOES have an influence!" but it really does not. EXPERIENCE does, and SKILL does, and PERSONALITY does. And yes, age can corelates with that. But that is it... it MAY corelate with it. We want to value 2 people with the same skills, and the same experience in the relevant fields equally, if they are 25 or 40.

Throw the letter of motivation in the trash where it belongs

Does the job you want someone to do involve writing 1 page marketing nonsense, that follows standards that is never specified? No? Then stop making people write those to get the job. Letters of motivation should only be required for jobs where the skills you showcase by WRITING such a letter is relevant.

Throw the CV in the trash where it belongs

There is NO agreement on what a CV should contain. You can find people claiming that THEY know, and that you should ignore the thousands of others who say the exact same thing but disagree on what it should contain. You may be able to boil it down to "relevant skills" and "relevant experiences"... but now you are having the person who have no information about the job or the inner workings of the firm guess what skills and experiences are considered "relevant". So unless the job you want them to do involves blind guesswork, don't do that. Simply have a website that asks the candidates the relevant questions. Write down the very specific skills you want (Embedded C++, Javascript in React, Kotlin for Android etc) and ask the candidate if they have those. Simple yes/no questions. And for each of them, have a more general question (Low level programming, front end web development, Android development). Now, ask the candidate the general question, and if they say yes, ask them the specific questions that relates to that. Do the same for experience. A specific question could be "Do you have 1 year or more experience working with relational databases via C# ?" and a more general question could be "Do you have more than 1 year or more experience working with C#" or "Do you 1 year or more experience working with relational databases?". And yes, you can also have them write a paragraph about their extra experiences: "What hobby or work in other industries have you done that have help you develop as a worker?" "For how long did you do that?" This is essentially the specific bits you are interested in from the CV. And basically, anyone in the codeblr community could make this website in a few days, AND have it output files that is nicely formatted. Give them a few more days, and they will have a website for setting up the interview question website so it can be done quickly and efficiently.

You CANNOT know if a person will work well in the firm, or in the team

What to ask at interviews have been studied a lot. And we have data to at least make SOME statements. One of which is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine if a person will work well together with a team based on interviews. People simply do not act in a way at interviews where you can judge it. No amount of personality tests that con artists have sold your firm will help, and no, people cannot figure it out just by talking to someone (People however THINK they can. Which is worse that simply not being able to). The only way to find out is to hire people. We can do a middle ground technique and hire people for a trial Period. Which is NOT a guarantee that they will KEEP working well with the team... but it is MUCH better at predicting it than people who think they are somehow better at psychology than the entire scientific field of psychology. And yes, this costs money. But it costs LESS money than the alternative.

Either know what you want from a interview, and be able to test it, OR, throw the interview in the trash where it belongs

Interviews are THE most expensive part of hiring someone. And I have yet to be at a interview where ANYONE asked themselves "Why are we doing this?". I would say, in 8/10 cases, they are wasted. If you need someone to do design, architecture or development or other work where thinking in creative but structured ways are required, then you can gain some value. Either ask questions that 100% of candidates should be able to answer, and then dig into the "why" of their answer. For example, ask a software developer to name a software pattern they are relatively familiar with. Then ask them what that pattern does, and when it should be used. And when it should NOT be used. You can also give people homework to do before the interview. Again for programming, FizzBuzz is a great choice. Why? Because it is a solved problem, that is solved in a unsatisfying way. The problem is basically: "Make a program that takes a number to count up to as a input. If the number is divisible by 3, have the program output "Fizz", if it is divisible by 5, yell "Buzz". If it is both, yell "FizzBuzz"". Basically, you will quickly find the optimization that you never check for "FizzBuzz!". You just check for the two other things and output the relevant word. If both are true, then FizzBuzz will appear. So you make your 3 checks into 2 checks.... and then you are stuck. There IS no way to optimize further. Ask the candidate what extra information they would want to solve this test better. You can ask this at a interview or again, via a website that also gives the candidate the problem. Because fun fact, if you know if the program should be optimized for Speed (IE CPU efficiency) or how much space the program takes, or both, then you can actually make the program a LOT better. And knowing to ask the right questions when you are given requirement to your program IS a very great skill to check if the candidate have. You can also check the code. Was it easy to read? Is it easy to modify? Did they do anything cleaver like use linear programming to make it run faster? Did they do clever optimization tricks? (If they did that is good... but it DOES also mean they might pre-maturely optimize, which is a deadly deadly sin in software development.) I went through that in detail, because it showcases HOW to approach designing questions and tests for a candidate for a specific job.

And if you think it is too much work, or if you cannot come up with relevant questions and tests... THEN DO NOT DO INTERVIEWS. If hiring someone without an interview feels like a blind shot. You are correct. But it is LESS of a blind shot than hiring a candidate based on random and irrelevant skills. And it is a shit-ton cheaper.

A beginners guide to GIT: Part 3 - How to learn GIT after (or instead of ) this guide

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care?

Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts

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A beginners guide to GIT: Part 2 - Concepts and terms

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. <-------- You are here Part 3: How to

Part 3: How to learn GIT after (or instead of ) this guide.

Part 4: How to use GIT as 1 person

Tumblr

A beginners guide to GIT: Part 4 - How to use GIT as 1 person

Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. Part 3: How to learn GIT after (or in

Part 5: How to use GIT as a group.

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A beginners guide to GIT: Part 5 - How to use GIT as a group.

Table of content: Table of content: Part 1: What is GIT? Why should I care? Part 2: Definitions of terms and concepts. Part 3: How to lea

First of all, GIT have a website:

And besides downloading GIT if you do not already have it, it has THE GIT book. It is honestly very good and contains quite a few translations

Second, GIT is one of the old pieces of tech. This means that it is open source, free, and that it contains its own documentation and guides.

If you are ever stuck, or confused about something in GIT, you can use the help command.

Simply writing

git help

Shows you the porcelain commands, and tells you that adding the option -a like so:

git help -a

gives you ALL commands

and the option -g gives you all the guides the manual have, like so

git help -g

If you give help another command,, it will bring you to the manual page for that command

for example, someone on the internet told you to write 

git help reset --hard

and you want to know what that means before running it? Write

git help reset

And you will be shown the manual page for “reset”. Including what --hard does. (To understand the manual, you need to understand the concepts and terms from part 2.)

If you want more visual explanations, Atlassian's guides are public and also quite good  (But , remember. Atlassian uses Bitbucket. Bitbucket is 99% GIT, but can still have tiny differences)