How would you handle a noob who hasn't committed in weeks and when he does, gets like a million conflicts.

Speak to them and ask why they had not committed. Then work through the reasons they give

Make him fix the conflicts. That will teach him

Hang him, for sure.

Remember that at one time you were that noob. We won't learn if no one explains why what we've done is a mistake or tells us the right way to do things.

It would seem my previous comment that was a little flippant was deemed inappropriate, apologies for any offence caused I have now removed the comment.

In reality I would probably explain the situation and just be honest about it.

@philcr hoe do you remove messages? O.o

@SirWindfield mine had a delete option on the right. I think it only works on comments

@philcr ye just saw it. Cool ^^. Thank you btw

explain to him that he should update his working branch daily with the new commits added in whatever branch you use for merging and integration (dev, develop, integration...).

If he doesn't know the specific commands of your versioning system, explain them as well, the function of each command and why he has to use them.

And make him fix all the conflicts, I assure you after wasting a full day fixing conflicts he will not make that mistake again.

It sounds like he needs mentored and the processes of your team explained. Once this mess is checked in. I would make sure each story is code reviewed prior to being checked in. I say that if a newbie is failing, have we given him proper guidance? Give them proper guidance and see if they progress over a couple of months.

Some great advice here when I was about to loose my mind. Thanks guys.

Went through some important lessons with her today and made sure she understands how it works.

The reason for not committing was to wait till the module was complete AND "stable". I made her fix the conflicts off course.

PS: it's funny how everyone just assumed she was a guy 😜

Wow, im about to start my first job as a developer soon, and im soo afraid of doing something like this! I think i need to start working on my git-skills

You must beat him with the stick of learning.

I teach part time at a 6 month bootcamp and one of the things we look for when placing junior devs is onboarding. It is really crucial that they get guidance. It is easy for us who have been developing for a long time to forget that there are so many choices we make on a daily basis that we take for granted. We don't even think about why we do them any more. Also many newbies have worked only on greenfield projects so they don't have a clue what continuous integration means. Example, why should I test with tests as well as user testing. What can go wrong if I change the data type in database? Why test apps in the major browsers? Why should I integrate checked in code with mine obsessively. How do we prep for deployment? Does the team do pair coding and code reviews?What are the "no nos" of this team? As a teacher I try to tell them these things but they don't realize yet that their job will be to create things while not breaking existing things.

@eirabie Well in your first post you did say "he gets loads of conflicts"... So maybe people were going off that

Explain the importance of version control to them

@nblackburn agreed. They don't get a good understanding of it until they have to develop against an important system that is in production that cannot be damaged by changed code. Also the idea of continuous integration is something that people don't grasp until they have broken something.