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Watched a guy lose 40 hours of work at a hackathon in Austin because he never pushed to GitHub
Last month I went to a beginner hackathon in Austin with my cousin who just finished his first coding class, mostly to cheer him on and eat free pizza. About 6 hours in, this guy two tables over starts yelling, and turns out his laptop just died, like would not turn back on at all. He had spent almost 40 hours on his project, a little budgeting app, and it was all saved in one folder on that laptop, nothing on GitHub, no USB backup, nothing. The room went quiet and a mentor walked over and actually said out loud, 'this happens at every single one of these.' My cousin went pale and immediately pushed his half finished code to GitHub right there, and now I make him text me a screenshot every time he commits. I am not a coder myself but I learned more from that guy's bad night than from any tutorial. So my question is, how often should a total beginner actually commit and push? Every hour, every save, or is that overkill?
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joseph9321d ago
Commit timing matters way less than where those commits actually go. Beginners hear "commit often" and end up with 50 saves sitting on the same dying laptop, which is useless when the drive fries. The real habit is pushing to a remote, like GitHub, so the code lives somewhere other than the machine that can die on you. Every hour or every save doesn't matter much as long as it leaves the laptop.
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