Junior Dev Tip: "Scroll Up"
My junior developer just came to me asking for help because their linting setup was broken. I’m writing this very quickly because I want to get all the details down.
Junior Dev: “My linting is broken, can you help?”
Me: “Sure”
get on a call with junior dev
junior dev runs linting command which ends with lots of “command failed” errors as well as a line that says “17 warnings, 2 errors”
Junior Dev: “See?”
Me: “Scroll up.”
junior dev scrolls up and sees 2 errors that say they forgot an attribute
Junior Dev: “Oh.”
I’ve had other experiences recently as well where a different junior developer also couldn’t tell me what was wrong with something. The error was right in front of them and they just didn’t scroll to the right place. They would click everywhere except for the thing that would tell them where the error was. I recognize that as a junior developers, you’re not as familiar with the tools, but the tools do provide you with information most of the time. You genuinely just need to take a few extra seconds and read what it is saying.
Note: I did ask my junior developer if it was ok to share this story. they said yes.