Making mistakes is OK

Dear new developer,

One time, not too many years ago, I was using git. I had used it for some personal projects, but hadn’t used it in the team setting before. We were using this git branching model. I was creating feature branches and working on them.

However, often I would be working on the same feature branch as a colleague. The first couple of times I was doing that, I used ‘git checkout -b <branchname>’ to checkout the branch. I’d then pull down the remote branch ‘git pull origin <branchname>’ and work on it.

Do not do this. Doing this will checkout a branch named <branchname> but it will be off whatever branch you were previously on. The pull will then merge the remote code. So you’ll get the code you want to work on, but there will be other code lurking. No good!

Instead, run ‘git fetch origin<branchname>’ and then ‘git checkout <branchname>’.

I point this out not because I’m trying to teach you version control (though you should learn it).

I point it out because this was a mistake. I don’t think any code escaped into production, but it definitely confused some team members and could have been very bad. It’s one of many many mistakes I’ve made in my career.

Mistakes happen to everyone. It’s important to learn how to handle them.

First, find out what the mistake was. You need to have an understanding of the mistake so you can avoid repeating it. This may be a conversation with another team member, research, or both.

Second, acknowledge that you made the mistake. If you work in an environment where you cannot acknowledge errors, make plans to leave as soon as possible. You don’t have to wail and beat yourself up, but just saying “oh, wow, I really screwed up that git branch stuff. Sorry!” is going to let people know that you made a mistake and that you are adult enough to know it.

Third, clean up your mistake. You may need some help doing so, but part of taking responsibility for your mistakes is fixing them as best as you can.

Fourth, avoid making the same mistake again. This may involve keeping a notebook, a writing a blog post, or just committing the correct solution to memory (this depends on the scale of the mistake). Bonus points if you do this in such a way that other folks, either internal (wiki page, slack message) or external (blog post, stack overflow question and answer) can benefit from your mistake.

Mistakes happen. It’s OK. Don’t pretend you don’t make mistakes, own up to them, and try to make new ones rather than repeating.

Sincerely,

Dan