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Gracie Gregory (she/her) for The DEV Team

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Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.


@krukru shared a true "Explain Like I'm Five" answer here. Love it!

Great question! This one really got me thinking, here it goes.

For your upcoming birthday, you ask your parents to buy you a Lego 1989 Batmobile.
The day finally arrives, and you are presented with a wrapped package, but they don't tell you what's inside. It is a surprise.

Your excitement rises, but before you get your hopes up - you examine the package.
Judging by the shape and size of the package, it matches the size of the 3306 piece box for the Lego 1989 Batmobile. Smoke test 1 passed.

You take the present in your hand and feel its weight. Its not too heavy, not too light. Just about right for a box of Legos. Smoke test 2, passed.

You decide to give it one final test before calling it. You shake the box and hear the familiar sound of Legos inside. Smoke test 3, passed!

Now you are fairly confident that the present is some kind of Lego, but you cannot really be sure if it is the Batmobile, so you start with user acceptance testing, unwrapping the present and validating the contents of the box.

Had any of the smoke tests failed, you would have immediately known that the present is not what you asked for, without investing time in detailed testing.

Some true wisdom from @dorgan:

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Your sage advice has convinced me to pursue time-travel more seriously, @scroung720! I could have really used "A" when I was younger.

Three things:
a)Don't be like the rabbit from The Rabbit & The Turtle - moral story. If you are good at something, that doesn't mean that you should work little, on the contrary, you should work harder than anyone. Discipline beats talent. Just because right now the people in your environment are not competition for you. It doesn't mean that there is no one better than you.
b)Never tell lies.
c)Always listen to everyone like they know something you don't.

It's all about that literal step back, @timmybytes!

This is well said, and I think you've got a great attitude about the "wall" we can sometimes run into while learning. Often just taking a step back (sometimes literally, breaks are good for you!) can give you some perspective. One thing I would encourage is to start tackling projects. Once you have the basics down in learning the front-end, you really only gain comprehension by diving in and trying to make something. Google every little thing if you get stuck, and soon enough the pieces will make a whole lot more sense.

For practice, Free Code Camp, Exercism, and Code Wars are all great options, along with Codecademy's mobile app for little quizlets on the go.

Great job, @andrewbaisden!

Re learned SQL, and almost learned Python.

See you next week for more great comments ✌

Top comments (5)

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vtrpldn profile image
Vitor Paladini

I love a good ELI5 that reads like an explanation to an actual 5-year-old kid. There is so much opportunity on using analogies to explain hard concepts that I'm puzzled about why it isn't more common.

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Hard agree!

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Great comments @krukru , @dorgan , @scroung720 , @timmybytes , and @andrewbaisden !

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Jacko

Can this be the 5th best 5th comment in Top 5 Comments? 🤔

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Jacko

Nah but seriously, nice pick!