The Monday Byte

Welcome to the Monday Byte where we send you 5 things each week to help you master the most important programming language: English.

📖 Word/Phrase - see you online

How do you normally end a video call? "See you later”

Lol, nope, that's weird. Instead, use this phrase: “see you online”

Because most of us work remotely these days, you'll end up seeing your coworkers later on Slack, Discord, or Teams so “see you online” sounds more natural.

💬 Pronunciation - success story Guillermo Rauch

I wanted to do something different this week. Instead of a critique, I wanted to share a success story.

Have you heard of Vercel? I'm sure you have. And if so, you know it's a billion-dollar company. But did you also know the CEO is a non-native English speaker?

Yeah, he grew up in a small town in Argentina called Lanús. Learned English and eventually ended up in the US. Now, you wouldn't even think twice about his English.

He's made it. His fluency is that of a native speaker and you hear it effortlessly in this podcast interview. This is your motivation. Your goal. And I'm going to help you get there.

_{By the way, if you have any other people I should feature for success stories, send them over!}

🗣️ Real World Conversation - merging bad PRs

You just merged a bad PR into main. Oops! What do you do?

If you can't answer this in 10 seconds, then you need a refresher on this topic.

This happened to a coworker in the past and he freaked out. “Joe!! I think my PR broke production. Help, what do i do??”

Simple. You revert the PR. GitHub has this built in. See it here on the right?

And if you're not using GitHub for source control, you can simply revert the commit with git revert . Easy!

Now you'll be ready next time you merge in a bad PR and need to ctrl + z it.

🔗 Content - DonTheDeveloper

Throughout all parts of the learning journey — both for programming and English — sometimes you get stuck. You need a little motivation or positivity to help you push forward.

That is exactly the type of content Don makes. He mentors junior developers and records these interviews (with their permission) and uploads them.

The people who go on are so vulnerable and real. You can't help but feel that you're sitting in the video call with them. I thought you might enjoy this.

💪🏼 Exercise - Level Up Your Vocab with ChatGPT

Friend and fellow reader of the newsletter sent me this screenshot showing a killer way he uses ChatGPT to help him with English:

Genius, right? “in the context of software engineering” is key to this prompt and will help you level up your vocabulary quickly.

Bonus: copy this prompt here and try it today

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon. And hey, remember, if you want a specific topic covered or need help, hit reply and let me know!

- Joe