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How GitHub No Longer Works

zachholman.com

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Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#71

Post by ternaryoperator »

jmathai wrote: post #51
yapcguy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the big deal about Github? Too much hype. Whenever you hear about the number of repos, most of them are just forks. In fact, I've created many by accident because Github changed their UI so clicking the icon instantly starts a fork instead of asking for confirmation first. I guess it's good for bumping the numbers up when getting private equity investors interested (cynical, I know). Security wise, meh. Why wo…

> A good business and a slick offering but it's not going to suddenly transform your software projects or your abilities as a programmer. I'd wager a pretty penny that Github has exposed a few orders of magnitude more people to the actual source of open source software than its predecessor, SourceForge. Edit: grammar

A few orders of magnitude? So at least 100x more? You might want to rethink that. sf.net gets more traffic today than github does. So, two orders of magnitude is most unlikely.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#72

Post by njr123 »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #71
jmathai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good business and a slick offering but it's not going to suddenly transform your software projects or your abilities as a programmer. I'd wager a pretty penny that Github has exposed a few orders of magnitude more people to the actual source of open source software than its predecessor, SourceForge. Edit: grammar

A few orders of magnitude? So at least 100x more? You might want to rethink that. sf.net gets more traffic today than github does. So, two orders of magnitude is most unlikely.

But most of the traffic to sf is just users downloading the software. If you were to look at the number of commits per day on sf v github, I wouldn't be surprised to see a x100 difference.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#73

Post by jmathai »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #71
jmathai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good business and a slick offering but it's not going to suddenly transform your software projects or your abilities as a programmer. I'd wager a pretty penny that Github has exposed a few orders of magnitude more people to the actual source of open source software than its predecessor, SourceForge. Edit: grammar

A few orders of magnitude? So at least 100x more? You might want to rethink that. sf.net gets more traffic today than github does. So, two orders of magnitude is most unlikely.

I don't know what's a valid source of traffic data but according to Compete you're absolutely right. I'm pretty surprised. It's also nice to see that their traffic has been trending upward.

You should have wagered.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#74

Post by dinkumthinkum »

patcon wrote: post #62
strumptrumpet wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. All the previous social constructs around properly documenting, testing, and releasing stable versions of your code have been swept away. Instead we're faced with the constant churn of semi-functional code, users working in silos and then showing up with patches well after it's too late to give them direction, animated GIFs instead of careful engineering discussio…

> Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. I stopped reading. We're not operating on the same plane of reality.

The parent makes very salient points, I think you'd do we'll to understand rather than brush then away because they don't comport with the conventional echo chamber wisdom.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#75

Post by techscruggs »

ben_straub wrote: post #68
canistr wrote: post #43

I'm always skeptical when companies say they have "no managers" and are a completely flat organization with 100+ employees. I don't pretend to fully understand organizational theory, but I take it that at some point, there will be someone doing the "management" work. Whether that's someone with the title of ninja/hacker/product guy/project manager/director/CEO/BDFL

(Disclaimer: Hubber.) Here's the thing about "management work": it turns out you don't necessarily need management to do it. Setting priorities? This can be done through consensus. Making sure schedules are met? Don't have schedules. (1) Hiring? Have everybody do it. Giving out raises? Set up a deterministic system and forget about it. Giving feedback? Everybody can do this. Running meetings? Don't have meetings. Com…

What is your deterministic system for determining salary?

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#76

Post by trumbitta2 »

holman wrote: post #5
bronson wrote: post #3

Seems like 20% of that slide deck is about chat rooms... GitHub still uses Campfire for chat? I tried Campfire and Hipchat a couple years ago, neither stuck. Not sure why, maybe poor offline notifications and logging? Or maybe our team didn't have enough timezone overlap or things to chat about? Hard to say. Is strong chat as important to Github as Zach implies?

Absolutely. As I mentioned, we have 150+ rooms that we chill in, and most of our day-to-day work practices are tied into chat. Mention someone's name in a room they're not present in and we send push notifications to their phone and desktop- works great to pull people in as needed, without needing to distract them with the noise of being in the room 24/7. Our ops team is particularly in deep with chat. Instead of sil…

I still don't get how do you manage to do security-sensitive things in Campfire via Hubot :-/

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#77

Post by Fauntleroy »

strumptrumpet wrote: post #60
techpeace wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal about GitHub is that they were in large part responsible for the current Open Source Renaissance we currently find ourselves in. Do you remember the world before? Where you would hunt for someone's private SVN repo on their personal site and email them patches, only to hope that something comes of your effort? Compare that with the world of today, where, if I'm using GitHub, I can submit a fix to a proje…

Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. All the previous social constructs around properly documenting, testing, and releasing stable versions of your code have been swept away. Instead we're faced with the constant churn of semi-functional code, users working in silos and then showing up with patches well after it's too late to give them direction, animated GIFs instead of careful engineering discussio…

Oh no, people are having fun...

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#78

Post by 0X1A »

strumptrumpet wrote: post #60
techpeace wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal about GitHub is that they were in large part responsible for the current Open Source Renaissance we currently find ourselves in. Do you remember the world before? Where you would hunt for someone's private SVN repo on their personal site and email them patches, only to hope that something comes of your effort? Compare that with the world of today, where, if I'm using GitHub, I can submit a fix to a proje…

Renaissance? Open source has never been less healthy. All the previous social constructs around properly documenting, testing, and releasing stable versions of your code have been swept away. Instead we're faced with the constant churn of semi-functional code, users working in silos and then showing up with patches well after it's too late to give them direction, animated GIFs instead of careful engineering discussio…

It's very easy to be a part of the the problem when you're not contributing to a solution. It's also very easy to say a lot about nothing. I mean that in that you source no projects that have gone the way you described.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#79

Post by timc3 »

What I get from these really great presentations presentations/posts/slidehows that Zach creates is that obviously GitHub is an interesting place right now, and Zach has got some really good insight but I can't help feeling that Zach really needs to get some experience with working at few more companies for some of the points he makes. Companies that succeed in different ways, companies that get bought out, companies that fail.

From the outside GitHub is in a really interesting space in that they can dog-food their own product very successfully, they have a huge market and intellectual share, and he writes as if this is the way that all companies could operate - but they simply can't.

For instances some companies have to play safe with what they say and do because they are in regulated industries, some just operate by people that have other values or outlets for their own time. I personally think it's fine if a company that I use has given up blogging or whatever to spend more time on creating a great product, or doing that while enjoying friends and family. I will leave/stop buying when the company no longer creates value for me, not when they stop talking at events or the original founders cash out because some people are born to create new interesting companies but are not suited to the 100+ person growth.

Zach if you are reading this, keep up the good work, but damn your writing is going to be interesting in 10 years time with a few more companies under your belt.

Re: How GitHub No Longer Works

#80

Post by [deleted] »

yapcguy wrote: post #41
eknkc wrote: post #11

I love almost eveything GitHub does, and the way they do them. I'm a GitHub fanboy. There it is. I had a similar crush on Google, maybe 6-7 years ago, they lost me somewhere on the road.

What's the big deal about Github? Too much hype. Whenever you hear about the number of repos, most of them are just forks. In fact, I've created many by accident because Github changed their UI so clicking the icon instantly starts a fork instead of asking for confirmation first. I guess it's good for bumping the numbers up when getting private equity investors interested (cynical, I know). Security wise, meh. Why wo…

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