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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#111

Post by Citizen_Lame »

Sytten wrote: post #71
reaperducer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes, all the spyware on Windows 11 really helped Microsoft scale up development and make it the best Windows version ever.

Now, let's replicate this with GitHub. What can go wrong?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#112

Post by tuwtuwtuwtuw »

LtWorf wrote: post #66
charcircuit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git notoriously has had performance issues and did not scale and has had a horrible user interface. Both of these problems can be measured using telemetry and improvements can be measured once telemetry is in place.

How was it notorious if git has no telemetry? According to you without telemetry nothing can be known, and nothing can become notorious.

He did not write that.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#113

Post by consp »

dualvariable wrote: post #102
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…

> Is it not sufficient to employ good engineering and design practices? Git... Git has horrible design and ergonomics. It is an excellent example of engineers designing interfaces for engineers without a good feedback loop. Ironically, you just proved your point that engineers need to better understand how users are actually using their product, because their mental visualizations of how their product gets used is us…

Apparently I use git wrong since I do not feel this design and ergonomics issue.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#114

Post by acedTrex »

embedding-shape wrote: post #105
johnfn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can spend the weeks to months of expensive and time consuming work it takes to get a fuzzy, half accurate and biased picture of what your users workflows look like through user interviews and surveys. Or you can look at the analytics, which tell you everything you need to know immediately, always up to date, with perfect precision. Sometimes HN drives me crazy. From this thread you’d think telemetry is scre…

> Sure, you can spend the weeks to months of expensive and time consuming work it takes to get a fuzzy, half accurate and biased picture of what your users workflows look like through user interviews and surveys. Or you can look at the analytics, which tell you everything you need to know immediately, always up to date, with perfect precision. Yes, admittedly, the first time you do these things, they're difficult, ha…

So if you don't want to spend the time doing that, or as is more accurate in corporate settings, the general turnover of the team is high enough that no one is around long enough to build that deep foundational product knowledge, and to be frank most people do not care enough.

This is why telemetry happens, its faster, easier and more resilient to organizational turmoil.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#115

Post by brontosaurusrex »

leftnode wrote: post #97
gardaani wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't only corporate development teams — open source development teams want to spy on their users, too. For instance, Homebrew: "Anonymous analytics allow us to prioritise fixes and features based on how, where and when people use Homebrew." [1] [1] https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics

Is it spying if: 1. It's anonymous 2. They're telling you they're doing it 3. You can opt out of it

"I'am watching you" is neat way to communicate with people?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#116

Post by gavinhoward »

incrudible wrote: post #93
dijksterhuis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Mercurial was better than Git on almost any metric, it eludes me why it lost out to Git, perhaps because it lacked the kernel hacker aura, but also because it did not have a popular repository website with cute mascot going for it. Either way, tech history is full of examples of better designs not winning minds, due to cost, market timing, etc. And now with LLMs being trained on whatever was popular three years ago,…

Because Git was faster.

This mattered because speed is the killer feature [1], and speed is often seen by users as a proxy for reliability [2].

[1]: https://bdickason.com/posts/speed-is-the-killer-feature/

[2]: https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#117

Post by Citizen_Lame »

tornikeo wrote: post #95

Good for GitHub. All companies need this. Some use it to improve products, some use it for less commendable goals. I know HN crowd is allergic to telemetry but if you've ever developed a software as a service, telemetry is indispensable.

All AI bros are the same.

P.S. You look like villain from Temu.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#118

Post by jubilanti »

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.

Wow, it really is sad how literally unthinkable it is to you and so much of the industry that you could actually talk to your users and customers like human beings instead of just data points.

And you know what happens when you reach out to talk to your customers like human beings instead of spying on them like animals? They like you more and they raise issues that your telemetry would never even think to measure.

It's called user research and client relationship management.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#119

Post by nkrisc »

DrScientist wrote: post #101
nkrisc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

> If what they want isn’t in your app, they can’t do it and it won’t show up in your data. Excellent point. > 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. Every web page visit is logged on the http server, and that's been the default since the mid 1990's. Is that spying?

In principle, yes, I believe it is a form of spying. Not particularly invasive nor harmful, but spying nonetheless.

Logging every page visited is not a technical requirement of serving the requested resource.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#120

Post by [deleted] »

CMay wrote: post #73

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 cou…

[deleted]
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