Your commits do not look like the commits from the previous video. A git merge does

I could be wrong, but I'm actually not seeing a discrepancy between this video and this video. If you've already merged fix-nils into master, then you'll definitely get a fast-forward merge when merging master into fix-nils.

I'd encourage you not to worry if the result you get doesn't exactly match the videos. The key thing is that you know how to do a merge commit when Git gives you one. If you'd like to practice making a merge commit, by all means make commits of your own to both the master branch and the fix-nils branch, and then merge them - Git should request that you make a merge commit.

The discrepancy looks pretty clear to me.

I'll try my best to put this into a sensible sequence/narrative. In the first video, you branch off of testing. https://imgur.com/a/O7rf0RF

As a result, your master and testing are the same. https://imgur.com/a/tMzuG3k

Until you deleted the fix nils branch.

At the beginning of the second video, your master looks totally different. https://imgur.com/a/96JQeJ8

At 1:16 "second you say that in the previous video we based the fix nils branch off the master branch" But that's a pretty glaring inconsistency.

Trying to explain how this makes it hard to follow along is another thing.

It's hard to cognitively multitask when you're trying to follow along each step and you have a different model that you are working on. I can't understand why this merge in this second video leads to a commit. I think it has to do with the way each commit has a parent? (That would explain why we couldn't fast forward but why a commit?) It helps to be able to look at the problem in the program.

I couldn't do the final merge because I was already "up to date."

I haven't started the next video so I have no idea if I'll be able to follow along.

(Also I don't know why at this point that my decoder test has errors in both branches. I don't know why in the previous video we don't see any values added to the 'key' data structure. (you don't have it; I don't have it) I know we added those value in earlier in the course) ***At the beginning of this video you say you "fixed this issue but only on the master branch" However at the end of the video you say. Now that our testing branch has been merged into master, we can run our unit tests from the master branch as well. Those tests still aren't passing"

One thing you could do to help is to provide files for each section in case things go wayward.

okilydokily That's a good point about the starter files - I'll get some put together.

It was while I was reproducing the steps to create those starter files that I think I confirmed the discrepancy you pointed out. It appears that I had the testing branch checked out when creating the fix-nils branch, when I thought I had the master branch checked out. (That's why I say later that master was checked out - I thought that it was.)

I'm going to confirm the issue, and if necessary take steps to correct the video.

I would recommend cloning your repository and continuing to follow along anyway. I'm fairly sure you won't see any further discrepancies. If you do find problems that are bad enough to derail your progress, then you can discard the clone and resume following along after the course is updated.

Thanks for pointing out the issue, and sorry for the confusion!