In Case You Missed It: The Most Popular Posts from the Past Week (April 24 - April 30, 2017)
Tags: top7
Published: 2017-05-01 21:00:45

---
title: "In Case You Missed It: The Most Popular Posts from the Past Week (April 24 - April 30, 2017)"
published: true
description: A round up of the most-read contributions from the community this past week.
tags: icymi
---

_Every Monday we will round up some of the last week's top posts, comments, and tweets. This is version zero. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment._ â¤ï¸

# Fine-tuned concentration
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/tqfS3mgQU28ko/giphy.gif)

Andrew Lucker wrote last week's top article, which walked through some of the scientific justification for blocking out distractions while trying to concentrate:

{% link https://dev.to/andrewlucker/why-do-programmers-wear-headphones-for-the-same-reason-that-you-cantjuggle %}

The article sparked an expansive discussion both in the comments section and on Twitter, as many a programmer shared their personal audio recipe for maximizing focus in a world full of interference:

{% tweet 856998521140121600 %}
{% devcomment 655 %}
------

# Keep it clean!
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/R6o5o9cUGgF32/giphy.gif)

Mohit Rajput reminded us all why taking the time and effort to write clean, readable code is so important, citing, among other reasons, communicability, extensibility, and reusability as key advantages of a well written program:

{% link https://dev.to/mohitrajput987/importance-of-writing-clean-code %}

[dev.to](/) members appreciated the post, although one reminded us that there will be natural variations in the quality of one's code and to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. 

{% devcomment 643 %}
------

# Hackathon How-to
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/fV9NKifWmFMzK/giphy.gif)

Marie-Philippe, writing under her nom de plume Girl Knows Tech, compiled ten tips for those interested in competing in a hackathon, taking the uninitiated from setting up a Trello board beforehand to grabbing some free swag while you're there:

{% link https://dev.to/girlknowstech/10-tips-to-win-your-next-hackathon %}

------

# All-natural Interviews
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/3oz8xN19iBuXRbsBqM/giphy.gif)

Beekley Cheung, perhaps better known as Professor Beekums, used his personal job-hunting experience to argue that preparing for an interview is optimizing for the wrong thingâ€”candidates should fit the job, not the interview:

{% link https://dev.to/pbeekums/why-i-dont-prepare-for-job-interviews %}

Most of the commenters agreed, although at least one found value in the act of interview prep:

{% devcomment 6an %}
------

# A certifiably good idea
![](https://media.tenor.co/images/715be469a0a3de4f4080da00af696ea7/tenor.gif)

Vykintas Narmontas is looking to boost his engineering profile by picking up some certifications in areas like business analysis and software testing, and was kind enough to share his methodology and search results:

{% link https://dev.to/scalawilliam/certifications-im-considering-as-an-experienced-software-engineer %}

If you too are considering certifications, their impact is discussed in [this episode of Soft Skills Engineering](https://dev.to/softskillseng/episode-34-do-certifications-help-and-how-can-i-avoid-avoidance).

------
# Capture the Flag
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/YCf18pHzVkFmU/giphy.gif)

In a post that introduced a lot of the Dev.to community to a new type of competition, Antoinette Maria summarized hr first experience at Capture the Flag, which she describes as "games for security offense professionals a.k.a. what most would call hackers (red team) and security defense professionals (blue team) alike and everyone who falls in the middle."

{% link https://dev.to/_theycallmetoni/capture-the-flag-its-a-game-for-hacki-mean-security-professionals %}

For more on CTF competitions, check out [this episode of The Secure Developer](https://dev.to/thesecuredev/ep-6-developer-war-games-capture-the-flag).

------
# Git organized!
![](https://media.giphy.com/media/m77wEsvF99FyU/giphy.gif)

In a comprehensive and meme-packed post, Nikola BreÅ¾njak reviewed the core ideas of version control and ran through the idea of gitflow:

{% link https://dev.to/hitman666/git-branching-done-right-with-gitflow--improving-code-quality-with-code-reviews %}

In response, one commenter opined that code reviews should not be done with the code's author present:

{% devcomment 6bi %}
------

_That's it for our weekly wrapup! Keep an eye on Dev.to this week for daily content and discussions...and if you miss anything, we'll be sure to recap it next Monday!_