Ti Zhang nombiezinja

Someone sent me an email asking me what advice I had for new developers. I get this question a bunch, so I wanted to put all my thoughts in one place, that I can update as I get more ideas!

I answered this a bunch on my AMA repo, so here's some initial general answers, before I get to some of the specific questions:

how to find a project to work on: notwaldorf/ama#33
how I learn: notwaldorf/ama#32
what to learn: notwaldorf/ama#51
advice for your first job: notwaldorf/ama#59

System Design Cheatsheet

Picking the right architecture = Picking the right battles + Managing trade-offs

Basic Steps

Clarify and agree on the scope of the system

User cases (description of sequences of events that, taken together, lead to a system doing something useful)
- Who is going to use it?
- How are they going to use it?

OAUTH2

The Problem

I’m a web app that wants to allow other web apps access to my users’ information, but I want to ensure that the user says it’s ok.

The Solution

I can’t trust the other web apps, so I must interact with my users directly. I’ll let them know that the other app is trying to get their info, and ask whether they want to grant that permission. Oauth defines a way to initiate that permission verification from the other app’s site so that the user experience is smooth. If the user grants permission, I issue an AuthToken to the other app which it can use to make requests for that user's info.

Note on encryption

Oauth2 has nothing to do with encryption -- it relies upon SSL to keep things (like the client app’s shared_secret) secure.

Better local require() paths for Node.js

Problem

When the directory structure of your Node.js application (not library!) has some depth, you end up with a lot of annoying relative paths in your require calls like:

const Article = require('../../../../app/models/article');

Those suck for maintenance and they're ugly.

	// See http://ppanyukov.github.io/2017/02/01/golang-with-vsts-repos.html

	package main

	import (
	"strings"
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"log"
	"net/http"

	package examplepool

	import (
	"context"
	"errors"
	"fmt"
	"sync"
	"time"

	_ "github.com/alexbrainman/odbc"

	## From Lynda.com course 'RSpec Testing Framework with Ruby'

	describe 'Expectation Matchers' do

	describe 'equivalence matchers' do

	it 'will match loose equality with #eq' do
	a = "2 cats"
	b = "2 cats"
	expect(a).to eq(b)

	// layout file

	<body>
	<div class="container">

	<%= flash_messages %>

	<%= yield %>
	</div><!-- /container -->
	</body>

	# This is a skeleton for testing models including examples of validations, callbacks,
	# scopes, instance & class methods, associations, and more.
	# Pick and choose what you want, as all models don't NEED to be tested at this depth.
	#
	# I'm always eager to hear new tips & suggestions as I'm still new to testing,
	# so if you have any, please share!
	#
	# This skeleton also assumes you're using the following gems:
	#
	# rspec-rails: https://github.com/rspec/rspec-rails

	git branch -m old_branch new_branch # Rename branch locally
	git push origin :old_branch # Delete the old branch
	git push --set-upstream origin new_branch # Push the new branch, set local branch to track the new remote