Session 3 Readings and Responses

The readings and responses listed here should take you approximately 20 minutes total.

To start this assignment:

1. Click the button in the upper right-hand corner that says Fork. This is now your copy of this document.
2. Click the Edit button when you're ready to start adding your answers.
3. To save your work, click the green button in the bottom right-hand corner. You can always come back and re-edit your gist.

Slack Shortcuts and Features (10 min)

Use Google to go find at least one online resource detailing keyboard shortcuts and/or features that are built into Slack.

• What resource(s) did you find? Paste them below:

1. Slack Help Center
2. Shortcutfoo.com

• What are three Slack shortcuts and/or features that will contribute to your productivity?

1. I love the cmd + [ and ] shortcuts to backward and forward in history. I never even knew I needed these until I learned they existed.
2. The cmd + T shortcut seems really helpful as a general search option. There are other shortcuts that have more specific features, but this general search option will be a good default when in doubt, especially as I'm learning and trying to remember shortcuts.
3. I'm a lowly incoming student right now with not a ton of communication happening on Slack yet, but when things ramp up, I'm looking forward to using the cmd + J shortcut to navigate unread messages. I also want to remember the option + click message to change a read message to unread, as a reminder that I need to respond later.

What's the use of the staging area in git? on Stackoverflow (10 min)

The idea of the staging area is frequently one of the trickiest concepts to wrap your head around when you're first learning git. Read the question and answers (or do your own Googling on the git staging area). Then, create your own metaphor comparing the staging area to something in real life.

• Type your metaphor below: Let's say you're cooking a delicious meal with lots of ingredients. As you prepare for your meal, you measure and chop all of your ingredients and put them in a separate area so they're easily accessible while you're in chef-mode. When your ingredients are ready and waiting, they're in the "staging" area -- they've been prepped and are ready to be modified toward a final product (your delicious meal). Also like staging, you can manipulate and work with specific ingredients but leave others for later, just like in staging where you can work with specific objects and "commit" but leave other elements for a later time.

Questions/Comments/Confusions

If you have any questions, comments, or confusions that you would an instructor to address, list them below:

1. I really liked this explanation of staging, from stackexchange.com: To stage a file is simply to prepare it finely for a commit. Git, with its index allows you to commit only certain parts of the changes you've done since the last commit. Say you're working on two features - one is finished, and one still needs some work done. You'd like to make a commit and go home (5 o'clock, finally!) but wouldn't like to commit the parts of the second feature, which is not done yet. You stage the parts you know belong to the first feature, and commit. Now your commit is your project with the first feature done, while the second is still in work-in-progress in your working directory.