GitHub isn't fun anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#21

Post by fuckyah » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:50 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #9

lwheelock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would genuinely make me migrate off github permanently, both for personal projects and work. A-men.

I recently set up a LinkedIn profile after avoiding them for many years, and was horrified to discover that there's now a "Facebook wall" feature, replete with all the horrible political conversations that made me abandon Facebook. It's totally in-your-face, too; it's the default home page and the default Android app page. I don't want to see what people I've connected on LinkedIn have to say about, well, anything. I…

f it

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#22

Post by nikivi » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:53 AM UTC

One thing I'd love to see is a flag in GitHub so the news feed won't be filled with repos that I have already starred (so you only get to see new things). This is especially useful as I have starred over 13,000 repos so most repos I will see are starred already.

https://github.com/nikitavoloboev?tab=stars

And before anyone asks 'why star so many repos..', I do it for super fast access of repos I am fond of with https://github.com/lox/alfred-github-jump

Plus you can sort them nicely into categories later. (https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/github-stars)

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#23

Post by bryanrasmussen » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:54 AM UTC

Probably it's because of not actually caring that much for things that are fun anyway, but why would I want my version control system to be fun?

Does this guy complain that his hammer fails to entertain him when pounding nails?

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#24

Post by michaelterryio » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:54 AM UTC

I used to use the elixir trending page to learn about new popular elixir libraries. It had twice as many repos as it has now. Now it’s garbage. I complained to GitHub when it happened. It’s purely worse.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#25

Post by Androider » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:56 AM UTC

Huh, TIL that GitHub has a trending page. I have a few projects with a few thousand stars, but have literally never seen this thing.

The choices on the trending page do seem weird, and kind of useless.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#26

Post by ShorsHammer » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:59 AM UTC

Have barely looked at explore that often, generally has little that interests me despite being fairly accurate with topics.

Following a range of people and checking the main feed from github.com now and then has always worked fine. Apart from some coworkers and collaborators the vast majority is people I've never interacted with, some are wellknown, many are simply folks I've come across over the years in certain fields of interest and seem active on GH.

There's a constant stream of interesting repos being worked on or starred with no real social aspect to it. As a discovery mechanism I enjoy the simplicity of it.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#27

Post by randomdude402 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:00 AM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #18

Hard pass on the suggestion to add more social network features. Such features are only conducive to drama and anxiety, we need less of that not more.

I regret only that I have but one upvote to give.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#28

Post by randomdude402 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #17

The OP is hitting at a long lived really difficult problem especially for a place like GitHub - how do you display what people care about? - recommendation engine Most stars in 24 hours? That gets the same group of 0.1% consistently at the top leading to a stale page. So Github tried to improve its 'signaling' of what's interesting yet new so you can keep coming back to the trending page? Is it stars the overall acco…

Is this especially a problem for GitHub, though? I had never suspected that people would use the site in this way.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#29

Post by keyle » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

I'm not sure I can link the title to the body of this post.

What does the trending section have to do with taking the "fun" out of maintaining code?

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#30

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

jdsully wrote: post #10

A major reason open source projects use GitHub is the social network features. It really helps you build traction and get noticed. Regardless of what you may think of it the trending page does indeed drive further traffic which drives adoption. Otherwise we'd all still be on SourceForge or migrate to something more OSS pure like Gitlab.

I don't use it for discovery though: It's just easy to jump in and contribute or open an issue when it's a common platform I am already logged into. There's low friction to jumping in.

That doesn't mean I necessarily need social media features.