Github has been a great boon to the D programming language community https://github.com/d-programming-language . There's been a very obvious 'before' and 'after' we moved to github.
Github turns five
121–129 of 129 posts
Re: Github turns five
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Git is like linux in... 1996 maybe. The underlying technology is pretty awesome, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of usability. Git is enormously powerful, but it has some key weak spots that can lead to intense frustration, and it doesn't exactly guide users into using it in the best way possible.
Mercurial is like a git designed for humans. Basically the same design (distributed, branching and merging is very easy) but with slightly higher-level command line options that removes some of the rough edges. I kind of wish it had won over git.
The obvious counter is that Git is like a dvcs designed for maintainers and only incidentally for developers. I started out using bzr and eventually switched to git, partly to try out github, and things like rewriting history have become a major part of my workflow (I'm picking that one because it seems to surprise people coming from other vcs systems how easy it is to rewrite history in git).
I'm sure mercurial is nice, and given its users passion for it I might recommend it to people starting version control for the first time (I'm in academia, version control is surprisingly rare), BUT... I'd use the term "very sharp edges" and not "rough edges." My impression is that they're meant to be there.
Re: Github turns five
#123Github has been a great boon to the D programming language community https://github.com/d-programming-language . There's been a very obvious 'before' and 'after' we moved to github.
Was the improvement from increased visibility for the project or from changes in the development process using GitHub?
Re: Github turns five
#124Github mainly succeeded because of the various shortcomings in Gits command line interface. Github made certain models of cooperative development incredibly easy, and since most or almost all of the open source development is just that the time was 100% ripe for something like github. Still, it is an incredible achievement and I hope that github will be around for a very long time to come. For a laugh: http://svnhub.…
Marc Hedlund: "One of my favorite business model suggestions for [web] entrepreneurs is to find an old UNIX command that hasn't yet been implemented on the web, and fix that." (2007)
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/when-in-doubt-make-...
Re: Github turns five
#125Github has been a great boon to the D programming language community https://github.com/d-programming-language . There's been a very obvious 'before' and 'after' we moved to github.
Was the improvement from increased visibility for the project or from changes in the development process using GitHub?
Both. What also improved enormously was participation by people who previously thought it too clumsy to. Github brought an organized, easy method of contributing. It was like night and day.
Switching to github was probably the best organizational decision we made.
From a business standpoint, I've also found that github's severs are fast and reliable, and the turnaround for tech support questions is fast and accurate.
I'm very impressed with github.
Re: Github turns five
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can stop you, but odds are it doesn't in many cases. IMO this is one of the biggest benefits of git over something like Subversion or CVS: its distributed, so you can continue to work locally while the origin is unreachable. I can't tell you how many times in my svn past where I couldn't get any work done simply as a result of the repo sever going down or having some other issue affecting its reachability. At leas…
It's certainly better than a similarly stable SVN server, there's no question about that. However, when it's down, I can't push my changes for others to review, or review pull requests. I can't update and pull in the latest changes, or checkout branches to help someone with a bug. If it's an integral part of your workflow, it can be quite a pain when it's down. "I can't tell you how many times in my svn past where I…
", I can't push my changes for others to review, or review pull requests. I can't update and pull in the latest changes, or checkout branches to help someone with a bug"
You can do all of these things if your colleague has that branch checked out - it does require remembering some pretty poorly-named CLI flags though!
Re: Github turns five
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's certainly better than a similarly stable SVN server, there's no question about that. However, when it's down, I can't push my changes for others to review, or review pull requests. I can't update and pull in the latest changes, or checkout branches to help someone with a bug. If it's an integral part of your workflow, it can be quite a pain when it's down. "I can't tell you how many times in my svn past where I…
", I can't push my changes for others to review, or review pull requests. I can't update and pull in the latest changes, or checkout branches to help someone with a bug" You can do all of these things if your colleague has that branch checked out - it does require remembering some pretty poorly-named CLI flags though!
Maybe, I work remotely, most other people will be in the office. Pulling something from someone on the internal network might be... interesting.
It is another benefit of git, and one of the reasons I first moved to it (often did work on a robotic system, pulling an pushing new branches was a really nice way of moving code back and forth without committing to a central repo).
Git is great, and github is brilliant. I just wish it was more stable, because I would say that is a real issue at the moment.
Re: Github turns five
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't matter that 99% of people don't know what it is because 99% of people are using software built with it.
[citation needed] - highly doubtful.
As far as the "99% of users are using software built with git" claim goes, it's not that far fetched depending on your notion of "using". ~32% of servers run Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...), which of course was built with git, so if you are an Internet user at all it is extremely likely that you are using software built with git.
Re: Github turns five
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
[citation needed] - highly doubtful.
As far as the "99% of users are using software built with git" claim goes, it's not that far fetched depending on your notion of "using". ~32% of servers run Linux ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... ), which of course was built with git, so if you are an Internet user at all it is extremely likely that you are using software built with git.
But not GitHUB. The site itself is not on par with Google in terms of influence, and neither does it's services influence nearly all Internet users.