I just read this article by Ariel Camus on FreeCodeCamp about becoming a Git Master. While I understand the need to have branches when working with others, I have been slack to adopt that process when working on my own projects. That is changing.

Slowly. Slowly because I have to remember to do it, not because I am resistant. Swiss cheese for brains.

I returned to one of my early assignments. I had completed a vanilla JavaScript Hangman in time, but I felt it could be better. Upon completion, it functioned as a hangman game and had a nice look to it:

I’d like to have the chalkboard and window closer, but the last thing I’ll change is the styling. The first thing I did was add Gulp to bundle and watch. There’s a branch. Next up was to give it better functionality. When I turned it in, it had a word bank that did not have words or phrases, so I had no desire to deal with hyphens, apostrophes, or spaces. Next I wanted to add more word banks. One for different themes and have the players choose a theme. Currently, the only theme is “pants”. Then I’ll deal with keeping track of losses as well as wins before ending this with styling.

Instead of touching the master, that was good enough as it was and possibly ruining it, I created my first branch: tests. I have since finished the tests and added that new function to the branch and merged. Next up, I checked out a word banks branch. This is where I am now.

Such a great habit to get into and it took me this long to do it? No. Not really. I have done it before, but I just forget to. When I realize I need to be on a branch, I’m already working on the master. It would not occur to me to work on the master when I’m part of a team, so why is this hard to remember when it is just me? Maybe I should just rip myself a new one so that mucking up the master is something that terrifies me. Put a mirror on my desk to really make the argument with myself seem real. Storm out. Apologize. Make up with ice cream. I see this as a win-win sitch.