[Launch School] Weekly Summary - October 23, 2017

Hi Everyone, It's that time again to get caught up with the latest happenings in the Launch School community. Lots of great articles ahead! [Tech & Talk Meet-ups]( This is a bi-weekly webinar series for the greater Launch School community created to facilitate the sharing and demonstration of interesting tech topics. Presentation topics may vary widely, and are not required to be related to Launch School's curriculum. This casual meetup-style webinar is a chance to learn from others and share your own experiences. Click through to read more about previous and upcoming talks, and also how to submit your own idea for a talk. I've also added this link to the [Resources]( side-navigation link for easy access. [Next Tech & Talk Session]( I'm excited to have our first student presentation! Ying Chyi Gooi will give a talk about working with files and directories on November 1st. Registration is required, so click through to register and attend. Note that these are open to everyone so you do not have to be subscribed to attend, though the primary audience will be those in the Launch School curriculum. Reminder: Giving Feedback I want to encourage everyone to keep giving us feedback, even for seemingly minor things like typos. I assure you that our team reads and addresses every issue, even if we don't email you back. It is one of the secrets about how we are able to create great content: we solicit for feedback and make improvements. Unlike most content you find on the internet, nothing we create is "done". It's the process of iterating on the material over months and years that makes it work, and it all starts with feedback. [Sharing and Contributing]( I love reading the articles everyone writes, from technical tutorials to learning and study aids. Recently they've slowed down somewhat, so I'd like to try to encourage more sharing. For every article submitted to the "Sharing" section and added to the Launch School Medium publication, we'll apply some credit to your account. The amount will range from $15-$50, depending on the length, depth, and quality of the article. We'll also do $100 credit for Tech & Talk presenters. Technical Articles [Tic Tac Toe in Terminal]( Robert goes through great detail in this article about his approach to working on the Tic Tac Toe assignment. If you haven't done the assignment yet, I'd suggest paying attention to the pain points and depth that Robert explored while working on this assignment. It's analyzing those small but difficult edges that helps develop good programming instincts, and not only about getting something running at the end. [No Object is an Island]( Wendy wrote a great article on "collaborator objects" after realizing she couldn't find anything useful on the internet about that topic. This article is so good that we decided to add it to the assignment as extra reading for everyone. [Functional Abstractions in JavaScript]( Tannr continues to write outstanding articles on interesting topics. Though the examples are in JavaScript, the idea behind functional, or declarative, abstractions is applicable to programming in general regardless of language. Non-Technical Articles [The Technical Interview]( Jocie shares her personal story about overcoming assumptions related to the technical interview. This article is extremely well thought out and I enjoyed reading it tremendously. It articulates a retrospection that's difficult for most people to think about, myself included, because it forces one to face one's vulnerabilities. I think most people at Launch School who have gone through at least one assessment interview can relate here. [Learn Forward, Then Backflip]( Tom talks about one of the most painful things you can experience at Launch School: how to process a Not Yet on an assessment. Drawing on his skiing expertise, he goes back to fundamentals. It's amazing how learning one thing well (skiing, in this case) is applicable to learning another skill well. And we all know this, but fighting off the marketing hype of big promises afflicts even the best of us. [Excursions and Distractions]( Here's an important topic that I haven't really heard anyone discuss yet: the difference between excursions, which are helpful, and distractions, which derail you from the journey to mastery. Nick does a great job of talking about this using a gaming analogy. Definitely worth a read and a difference worth considering in your own learning journey. That's it this time! As always, weekly summary archives are in the [Resources]( link in the side-bar navigation. --------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to stop receiving emails from us, you can use the one-click link below to unsubscribe. [Unsubscribe From All Email]( [Unsubscribe From Weekly Summaries](