Posted by mootmail-googlegroups on 09/26/06 17:46

newsleecher@spam.com wrote:
> Also, the guys are willing to help me, but they are so Fricking fast
> in the way that they do it and the fact that they are showing me on
> their linux machines makes it that much harder to grasp. I am going
> to spend the entire weekend learning this stuff. Thanks for any and
> all help.
>


Oh, I know how fast those unix/linux guys can be. I have plenty of
friends and co-workers who grew up on the command line and when they
get typing, it can seem like someone just hit the x32 fast-forward
button. Being a windows guy myself, I've learned to play to my own
strengths, not to try and become like them. To me, the command line
will never be as intuitive to use as it is to someone who's been on it
for decades.

Personally, I keep a text file of "Useful Unix Commands" that I've
picked up over the years. When I see someone do something interesting,
I go look up the man pages for the command (if you are really a newbie,
'man' is the very first command you should learn) and try to figure out
what exactly they did. If that doesn't help, I just google for a bit
until I find it. Once I figure it out, I make a note of it that I can
refer to the next time I need it. Over time, you gradually learn it to
the point where you don't need to look it up every time.

Also, if they are moving through code examples too fast, don't be
afraid to, after they are done, just say "email me a copy of that,
would you?". It'll take them 2 seconds, and it will let you work
through the code at your own pace back at your desk.

As for them working without a dev environment, that's just reckless and
stupid on their part, even with cvs in place. You don't have to be a
part of that. Install Apache/PHP/a database on your own computer and
pull down a copy of everything on Live. Then you have your own
personal development space where you can do whatever you want and it
isn't going to F anything up.

If you can, try to get them to set up a dev environment for the group.
Flying without a net isn't a sign up your coding-prowess, it's just
dumb. Where I work, we aren't developing anything
uber-"Mission-Critical" that can't have a single second of downtime,
but we still have seperate dev environments for EACH programmer. It
doesn't take that much effort to set up, and everything stays current
with automatic cvs sync's.

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