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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#71

Post by Sytten »

reaperducer wrote: post #58
a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Because they're too shy, lazy, or socially awkward to actually ask their users questions. They cover up this anxiety and laziness by saying that it costs too much, or it doesn't "scale." Both of these are false. My company requires me to actually speak to the people who use the web sites I build; usually about every ten to twelve…

Respectfully I think your argument defeats itself. If you can only speak to your users once every 10-12 months it means your process doesn't scale by definition. Good analytics (not useless vanity metrics) should allow you to spot a problem days after it was launched not wait 3 quarters for a user to air their grievances.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#73

Post by CMay »

If you have 3 of your developers spending 80% of their time in an area of the codebase that gets no usage and you don't see a path forward that realistically is likely to increase usage, it can be a better use of developer time to focus them elsewhere or even rethink the feature.

The problem I have with a lot of these analytics is that while there are harmless ways to use it, there is this understanding that they could be tying your unique identifier to behavioral patterns which could be used to reconstruct your identity with machine learning. It's even worse if they include timestamps.

Why not just expose exactly what telemetry is being sent when it's sent? Like add an option that makes telemetry verbose, but doesn't send it unless you enable it. That way you can evaluate it before you decide to turn it on. Whenever you do the Steam Hardware survey it'll show you what gets sent. This is the right way to do it.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#74

Post by dijksterhuis »

dale_glass wrote: post #48
a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

> I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? No, because users have different needs and thoughts from the developers. And because sometimes it's hard to get good feedback from people. Maybe everyone loves the concept of feature X, but then never uses it in practice for some reason. Or a given feature has…

> I think yes, because git famously has a terrible UI, and any amount of telemetry would quickly tell you people fumble around a lot at first.

1. git doesn’t have a UI, it’s a program run in a terminal environment. the terminal is the interface for the user.

2. git has a specific design that was intended to solve a specific problem in a specific way. mostly for linux kernel development. so, the UX might seem terrible to you — but remember that it wasn’t built for you, nor was it designed for people in their first ever coding boot camp. that was never git’s purpose.

3. the fact that every other tool was designed so poorly that everyone (eventually, mostly) jumped on git as a new standard is an expression of the importance of designing systems well.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#75

Post by Sytten »

embedding-shape wrote: post #65
Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

You're only flying blind if you make decisions not looking and thinking. Analytics isn't the only way to figure out "what your users actually care about", you can also try the old school way, commonly referred to as "Talking with people", then after taking notes, you think about it, maybe discuss with others. Don't take what people say at face value, but think about it together with your knowledge and experience, and…

We do both and they yield different learnings. They are complementary. We also have an issue tracking board with upvotes. I would say to your point that you can't improve what you don't measure.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#76

Post by ubercore »

Sytten wrote: post #61
a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

It makes me think, what `gh` features don't generate some activity in the github API that could as easily guide feature development without adding extra telemetry?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#77

Post by nkrisc »

Sytten wrote: post #61
a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

> The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

And the difference between what they do and what they want is equally shocking. If what they want isn’t in your app, they can’t do it and it won’t show up in your data.

Quantitative data doesn’t tell you what your users want or care about. It tells you only what they are doing. You can get similar data without spying on your users.

I don’t necessarily think all data gathering is equivalent to spying, but if it’s not entirely opt-in, I think it is effectively spying no matter what you’re collecting, varying only along a dimension of invasiveness.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#78

Post by ForHackernews »

a2128 wrote: post #14

Why we collect telemetry ...our team needs visibility into how features are being used in practice. We use this data to prioritize our work and evaluate whether features are meeting real user needs. I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git has served us well for 20+ years without detailed analytics…

Arguably yes. git has a terrible developer experience and we've only gotten to this point where everyone embraces it through Stockholm syndrome. If someone had been looking at analytics from git, they'd have seen millions of confused people trying to find the right incantation in a forest of confusing poorly named flags.

Sincerely, a Mercurial user from way back.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#79

Post by merlindru »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #63
Sytten wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to believe that it was not necessary until I started building my own startup. If you dont have analytics you are flying blind. You don't know what your users actually care about and how to optimize a successful user journey. The difference between what people tell you when asked directly and how they actually use your software is actually shocking.

I'm pretty ok with the github cli tool team flying blind. The tool isn't exactly a necessary part of any workflow. You don't need telemetry to glean that

that's akin to saying "i do not need their product therefore i don't care"... so what's your point? someone may have made it part of their workflow!

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#80

Post by ForHackernews »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #74
dale_glass wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious why corporate development teams always feel the need to spy on their users? Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? No, because users have different needs and thoughts from the developers. And because sometimes it's hard to get good feedback from people. Maybe everyone loves the concept of feature X, but then never uses it in practice for some reason. Or a given feature has…

> I think yes, because git famously has a terrible UI, and any amount of telemetry would quickly tell you people fumble around a lot at first. 1. git doesn’t have a UI, it’s a program run in a terminal environment. the terminal is the interface for the user. 2. git has a specific design that was intended to solve a specific problem in a specific way. mostly for linux kernel development. so, the UX might seem terrible…

UI means "user interface". For a CLI tool the UI is the commands and modifiers it offers on the terminal.
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