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Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

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Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#12
post #11

Used it some weeks ago to understand a package in the kubernetes codebase. Its great for getting insights on an unfamiliar project

Thanks! If you have any suggestions for us please open up an issue on our repo.

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#13

Hey, congrats on the open source approach! I do have a question on your strategy though. How do you get valuable feedback from users? What incentive does your users have in order to communicate with you back and forth trying to build a better product?

Ty! Open source is a very important part of our philosophy. 1. We track which GitHub usernames and repos that use Watermelon, it's the only thing we track. This allows us to go to people and ask them for more detailed feedback. We also get feedback from stargazers and forkers. Because we're open source, people also leave GH issues. 2. The incentive is something very basic: They wanna see a better version of this out…

According to the repo it is more than just username and repo, the local user account and email address is also tracked [1]. I'd argue that you shouldn't be recording email since that is PII. And repo name and repo owner since the names could be considered trade secrets within organizations. Recording the local user account could be considered sensitive information since it could aid hacking the organization. Finally I don't think you should be recording the GitHub username as well since usage patterns could be analyzed to determine the timezone of the user, which is also considered sensitive personal information in some large corporations that track user behavior data.

Sorry, but I don't think you should request feedback from users without their explicit permission. Isn't there a feedback mechanism built into VSCode already, or make and affordance for one in your plugin UI? Maybe at best generate a random install ID that can be reset for analytics and session tracking? VSCode has guidelines for this, see [2].

[1] https://github.com/watermelontools/wm-extension/blob/c389125...

[2] https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/telemetry...

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ty! Open source is a very important part of our philosophy. 1. We track which GitHub usernames and repos that use Watermelon, it's the only thing we track. This allows us to go to people and ask them for more detailed feedback. We also get feedback from stargazers and forkers. Because we're open source, people also leave GH issues. 2. The incentive is something very basic: They wanna see a better version of this out…

According to the repo it is more than just username and repo, the local user account and email address is also tracked [1]. I'd argue that you shouldn't be recording email since that is PII. And repo name and repo owner since the names could be considered trade secrets within organizations. Recording the local user account could be considered sensitive information since it could aid hacking the organization. Finally…

Hey! This is great insight, honestly wasn’t aware and you’re right. Any chance of sending a PR for this? Would you be interested on talking about employment with us (open to part time)? We are a fully remote company.

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#17
nicorojas9, alan_arguello, jgarzonebrath and oarojas were all accounts which are between 2 year and 90 day old without any comments.

Suddenly they decided to comment for the first time on this specific submission.

And all within one hour.

And all to basically write the same thing.

The Watermelon authors are lucky or maybe it is Friday the 13th.

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#18
Hey Esteban, it’s Sebastian. Huge congrats on your HackerNews launch!!!

I had the pleasure of working with Esteban (aka baristaGeek) at Cerebrum. Great guy. There’s a saying that the best employees go on to be founders, and I can definitely see that in what Watermelon is becoming. Very exciting!

And yes! The code onboarding problem is always there. Watermelon providing that historical context is huge.

P.S. I just happened to find this at the bottom of the homepage. I had no idea Esteban would be posting here, I just browse HN a lot.

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#19
post #17

nicorojas9, alan_arguello, jgarzonebrath and oarojas were all accounts which are between 2 year and 90 day old without any comments. Suddenly they decided to comment for the first time on this specific submission. And all within one hour. And all to basically write the same thing. The Watermelon authors are lucky or maybe it is Friday the 13th.

Wow this Sherlock Holmes-level research.

Our close friends did notice we launched. Lol.

Re: Show HN: Watermelon – open-source VSC ext. to document code and view Git blame

#20
super cool! have long been interested in tooling for making code archaeology easier!

any plans for building extensions for various issue/work tracking systems, wikis, email archives, etc? i've longed for comprehensive views across tickets, pull requests, bug reports and wikis for all relevant knowledge for a given effort in past.

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