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GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

cli.github.com

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Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#211

Post by skydhash »

KronisLV wrote: post #204
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? Cause the alternative is viewing all of your app as one opaque blob - you don't know exactly how it's being used, which features actually need your attention, especially if you're spread thin. If you're in consulting or something like that and the clients haven't let you configure and/or access analytics (and the same goes for A…

> you don't know exactly how it's being used, which features actually need your attention, especially if you're spread thin.

Why not conduct a survey?

> vague bug reports instead of automated session recording and if you need to maintain that, you'll have gray hairs appearing by the age of 30.

If it's a customer, why not reach directly to him?

> with the system working okay at a load X, but falling over at X+1 and you having to spend late evenings trying to refactor it,

No one is talking about telemetry on your servers. We're talking about telemetry on client's computers.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#212

Post by throwaway27448 »

chrishill89 wrote: post #206
throwaway27448 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the hidden cost of educating millions of users how git actually operates once they can't restore a file

Neither of these two commands are any more really-operates than the other.

How do you figure? Are you discarding the semantics of how people invoke git? If so why advocate for "restore" to begin with?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#213

Post by Banditoz »

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.

GitHub CLI is not a SaaS. It's a commandline utility.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#214

Post by throwaway27448 »

merlindru wrote: post #79
throwaway27448 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

True. Some people shouldn't use git if their workflow doesn't beg it.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#215

Post by jmclnx »

grugdev42 wrote: post #38

Remember that thing Microsoft does? Embrace, extend, extinguish. The first two have been done. I give it five years before the GH CLI is the only way to interact with GitHub repos. Then the third will also be done, and the cycle is complete.

>I give it five years before the GH CLI is the only way to interact with GitHub repos.

I do not doubt this, already it seems to be a pain to deal with some repos on github without using gh. I do not know what gh buys you but I have never used it so I do not know if it is "better". To me the standard git commands are fine. But yes, I think the trend to forcing gh upon us is already being done.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#216

Post by skydhash »

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…

> Git has horrible design and ergonomics.

People say this and never has written about the supposed failure of design. Git has a very good conceptual model, and then provides operations (aptly named when you know about the model) to manipulate it.

Most people who complains about git only think of it as code storage (folder {v1,v2,...}) instead of version control.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#217

Post by Apylon777 »

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.

How did GitHub ever survive without this telemetry? Was it a web application buried in obscurity?

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#218

Post by tensegrist »

ryanshrott wrote: post #155

> you're going to have to opt out of a lot more than this one setting The opt-out situation for gh CLI telemetry is actually trickier than it sounds. gh runs in CI/CD pipelines and server environments where you may not want any outbound connections to github.com at all, not because of privacy but because of networking constraints. In those environments, the telemetry being on by default means your CI fails or your Ba…

> In those environments, the telemetry being on by default means your CI fails or your Bastion host can't reach GitHub at all.

i'd be surprised if the inability to submit telemetry is a hard error that crashes the program

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#219

Post by rprend »

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…

Product work can be counterintuitive. An engineer / PM might think that a design or feature “makes sense”, but you don’t actually know that unless you measure usage.

Re: GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry

#220

Post by goosejuice »

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.

Microsoft has a horde of developers that fit the entire breadth of gh usage. They could fix issues prior to a release if they wished to without opt-out client side telemetry.
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