Team Build — Extended Notes

Not rendered in the platform yet. Reference for instructors and for future "learn more" surfaces.

Purpose

The capstone of 1.welcome. By this point a cadet has used every tool they need: mkdir, echo, git init, git config, git add, git commit, and shell scripting with chmod +x. This battle forces them to combine all of it into a single artifact — a working automation script — and to read someone else's script for the first time.

Skills Demonstrated

Composing learned commands into a sequential program
Writing a script with a correct shebang and execute bit
Producing exact output from automation
Reading another cadet's code well enough to score it
Giving and receiving honest feedback under a time limit

Common Pitfalls

One commit covering all three files — defenders forget that the spec says each file commits separately. Three commits, not one.
File contents with extra whitespace — echo adds a trailing newline by default, which is fine; trailing spaces on the line are not. Reviewers should cat -A to spot invisible characters.
Missing or wrong identity — git commit will succeed even without user.name set if a fallback is configured globally; reviewers should check git -C mission config user.name directly.
Hardcoded absolute paths — cd /Users/... breaks the moment the script runs on someone else's machine. Use relative paths.
MISSION READY printed inside another message — the spec says "exactly". echo "Done. MISSION READY now." should fail review.
Forgetting chmod +x — script runs fine via bash launch.sh but fails when executed directly. Reviewers should test both.

Discussion Prompts (post-battle)

Ask the pair to discuss for 5 minutes after both rounds:

Whose script was easier to read? Why?
Was anything in the spec ambiguous? How would you tighten it?
What would you do differently if you wrote this from scratch today?
Did you find a bug your partner missed?

Alternative Approaches

A cadet who's seen heredocs might write:

cat > manifest.txt <<EOF
Mission Apollo
EOF

Both echo "..." > file and heredoc are acceptable. The spec doesn't require a specific style — only that the resulting file content match exactly.

Why This Is the Last Block of Welcome

This is the bridge between mechanical skill (typing commands) and real engineering (composing them, reading others' code, judging quality). Cadets who pass this battle have proven they can act as both author and reviewer — the foundational loop of every collaborative codebase. Python is built on this foundation.

2.6 KiB Raw Blame History