GitHub isn't fun anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#481

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #460

_fnhr wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't really need to experience it to see how this one day might happen to you. Here is a recent example with RuboCop: https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rubocop/issues/8091 "Cop" suddenly became a problematic word and you can read the comments in that issue thread. Imagine you have some repo like "PinkKitty", and then someone blows himself up dressed in pink and pink becomes a symbol of Jihad or White Supremacy or wh…

Wow, Rails actually changed blacklist/whitelist to denylist/allowlist.[1] [1] https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/33681

You'll quickly stop being surprised on this one because this change is inevitable across the industry in the coming years. I too had the same reaction when I was first exposed to the change a year ago, but now I'm "meh" about it. Language evolves a lot over time, surprisingly quickly. And allowlist/denylist really are better words to describe what's going on, even ignoring the other connotations.

Another similar change that's rapidly approaching is renaming the master branch to main (which, again, seems like a superior choice to me even divorced from the larger cultural context).

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#482

Post by recursive » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

I didn't even know there was a trending page on github.

> I always thought of it as the defacto front page of the open source movement.

It seems more like an auxiliary curiosity at best.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#483

Post by saadalem » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

Here are four ideas for what a next generation Github might look like, ready for the next billion programmers:

1. Simplify the Git interface to optimize for daily workflows

2. Assume all code is online, all the time

3. Invest in Github’s people network

4. Invest in Github’s code network

What does the toolchain for the next billion programmers look like? I’ve written the above as if I were Github, but I think there’s a fair chance they’ll miss out on a lot of this. And that might just be an opportunity for you.

(from Sam Gerstenzang)

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#484

Post by atulatul » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

kirse wrote: post #472

lqet wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential: what is up with this inflationary expectation that everything should be "fun" and "exciting" and "thrilling"? I feel like western society as a whole is thinking more and more in terms of a six year old. For adults, there lies incredible satisfaction in mastering any but the most exploitative professions or jobs and fulfilling them dutifully, even if they are be no means "fun".

what is up with this inflationary expectation that everything should be "fun" and "exciting" and "thrilling" A couple years ago I dubbed this trend "Flanders Computing" [1]. I haven't really given much thought about its origins, but it's probably got to do with the increasing demand for happiness that we Americans hold dear. Collectively I think it's entered the American psyche that the answer to happiness is to avoi…

>increasing demand for happiness that we Americans hold dear

"The problem is not that we want to be happy; it is that we want to be happier." Not my own observation. But I like it.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#485

Post by _ZeD_ » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

>>> The Trending page used to be a straight-up list of the projects with the most new stars in the last 24 hours across the whole site (and by language).

honestly, I never ever knew there was a "trending" page on GH...

>>> I always thought of it as the defacto front page of the open source movement.

and I am old enough to remember freshmeat...

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#486

Post by diegoperini » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #462

floatingatoll wrote: post #61

GitHub's time as the "cool" option has ended. It has matured and moved beyond the early adopter community, and presence on it is no longer a social signal of any significant relevance. I use GitHub to get work done, either on my projects or on others. I do not expect GitHub to innately provide me a degree of fun. That's the job of the projects, not of GitHub itself. Zoom exited the early adopter phase this past pande…

Hopefully something not using git. Changeset workflow glued onto snapshot storage is just fundamentally broken.

Can you explain why? It sure has its pluses and minuses but which aspect makes it broken?

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#487

Post by nickik » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #335

xwdv wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The master and slave debate was dumb, and reflects a creeping of political correctness into coding and software over the years that I do not look forward to. React’s keywords have been similarly attacked for promoting a “bro” culture with use of words like props or mount. And man-in-the-middle attacks are increasingly being described as person-in-the-middle, at the expense of alliteration. So many other examples out…

This is a bit longer than I intended, but is my point of view, and not intended to dismiss what you’re saying at all. I think it’s easy to dismiss conversations like master/slave whitelist/blacklist as overly PC or childish. I certainly don’t appreciate the overly-preachy feeling I sometimes get from people pushing their point of view. And my nature is to find pleasure in giving The Man the proverbial finger. The sel…

> like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions

What I find funny is that the 'vocabulary of war' gets about 100000000x more actual discussions of war and how the US is regularly killing people and has been engaged in ongoing war for 20 years and about 1000s of other way more harmful things.

Apparently nobody gives a single shit about that stuff.

I don't really care about changing the vocabulary for these technical terms and enough people go crazy over it then lets just change it so I don't have to deal with the discussion. I certainty wont waste any energy defending the master/slave terminology, I doesn't really make any sense anyway in DBs specially.

Changing the default away from 'master' in git seem totally pointless as the term master is not only used in a master/slave context but in many other context as well. Its not like we have the master branch and slave branches. Again, I also don't care if we change it.

One of the issue with white/black is that the night bad, day good dynamic goes back 10000s of years. The same patterns exist in African and eastern religion and imaginary, so not sure purging all use of the color black for 'bad' is sensible.

Is the term Blackmagic or Black Humor also offensive now? I don't even no. I like Black metal, is that offensive? I hope not because that would be taking it to far.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#488

Post by dhbradshaw » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

I think, given his content, that this comment is overly broad. Instead, it should probably say that the Github trending page isn't fun any more.

And he gives a nice and precise reason for this: the Github trending page used to have all the qualities of a game. There were ranked participants and there was a clear, known score. If you wanted to do well in the game, then you knew exactly what you had to do. As a bonus, the rules happened to be such that the ranked results were actually interesting.

Now the trending page has an opaque score. Opaque scores and rules almost never make for a fun game.

Perhaps the results are interesting. If so, how do we know that? It's hard to judge whether or not they are because we don't know the scoring mechanism. So the page loses not only its fun but its meaning as well.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#489

Post by soperj » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

soraminazuki wrote: post #467

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese culture is quite different from American culture. We did rebuild them, and McArthur is revered as a god, over there. But they really have their own culture, and some aspects can strike us as quite strange (as, I am sure, some aspects of our culture weird them out). I worked for a Japanese company, and went there, multiple times a year, for about twenty years (all Tokyo, so I can't speak for the rest of Japan…

> McArthur is revered as a god, over there While he's undeniably a famous historical figure in Japan, my impression is that the majority of Japanese people don't have any strong opinions about him. After all, how many people actually care so much about historical figures when they're busy watching cat videos on YouTube? But for the people who do have some interest, I assume many have mixed feelings on the matter, whi…

>though I do hope they're only a minority of Japanese people whose voices are amplified by Twitter echo chambers.

Why? There's a reason Dugout Doug was fired during the Korean War. Guy was a menace.

Re: GitHub isn't fun anymore

#490

Post by wallacoloo » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #288

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #100

I’ve never considered GitHub to be “fun.” It’s a great tool , though. Most of my GH interaction is through my desktop system, not a browser (pushing and pulling checkouts). I’ve been using some form of source control for nearly 30 years (since Projector, in the 1990s). It’s a tool. A very, very important tool. I appreciate many of the “glossy” features of GH, like hero images and GH Pages, but this shows how “out of…

Tangential: what is up with this inflationary expectation that everything should be "fun" and "exciting" and "thrilling"? I feel like western society as a whole is thinking more and more in terms of a six year old. For adults, there lies incredible satisfaction in mastering any but the most exploitative professions or jobs and fulfilling them dutifully, even if they are be no means "fun".

I think you could benefit from laying out a few examples, because on my own I’m struggling to put your claim into more concrete terms that I can relate to.