To me, coding is fun. Stockholm syndrome? Maybe? Regardless, I don't think people aren't in a position to tell others what is/isn't fun.
GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
31–40 of 120 posts
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#32Has to be a joke... I mean if you really care you can just checkout the repo and generate your own graphs.
But then no one else is going to see your graphs. That's what gamification is about.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#33Is this an April Fools joke? I've never seen anyone who gave a fuck about their contribution graph and record streak, except for devs who developped clever git repos that make your contribution graph show pixel art (which is pretty awesome). I want to say if you feel pressure when looking at your contribution graph, it's all in your head and you should take a break because you're clearly not thinking straight.
Reading the first sentence, this is definitely an april fools joke.
I genuinely can't tell.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that it's a largely irrelevant / frivolous feature, and if someone cares deeply about it, it's likely a sign of some deeper psychological issue. But deeper psychological issues are real, and gamification definitely pushes a certain agenda. When that agenda (in this case "streaks" and "commits per day") isn't really serving a community, it would be sensible for the community to tweak those rules. Putting some…
Just because you don't see a problem you assign mental illness in the poster? That seems very harsh.
I don't see a claim that any particular person cares deeply about the commit graph.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
People care a ton about their streaks and I have noted that before. It encourages people to not have weekends.
As someone who used to care about streaks, it only takes one small commit and it can be a small reword of a readme ;)
Or a little cronjob that commits harmless changes later in the week? :P
I don't care about the contribution streak, but do have friends who comment on theirs on Twitter now and then. I suppose it's just another thing to be proud of...
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#36I'm surprised at how dismissive all of the comments have been so far. There are a lot of cultural habits around programming that are exclusionary, and if we're trying to pull more people into the field, discouraging people who can't code every single day could have a negative impact. It's at least worth exploring.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#37>> The contribution graph and the statistics on it, prominent on everyone's profile, basically rewards people for doing work on as many different days as possible, generally making more contributions, and making contributions on multiple days in a row without a break. If you're concerned about those things, you need to do some deep introspection and fix whatever issues you have inside yourself.
What would those internal issues be? Wanting to be appreciated by your peers?
The argument made by the author is that the graph implicitly transmits a message which I think most of us don't agree with: "Passionate developers work all the time."
So, you're right - it's not harmful because it causes people to crave external validation. It doesn't and therefore removing it will not make the craving go away.
Rather, it's harmful because it makes the people who do crave validation behave in ways that are counterproductive for everyone.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#38Last year I had new year resolution to have each square in my graph to become some shade of green.
Did I contribute very many very small commits? Yes.
Did I think about everything I do daily from a global/sharable/modular perspective? Absolutely!
Did it make a dent in the world? No.
Yes, it was stressful at times. But I still think I became a bit better at approaching problems from re-usability perspective.
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#39[deleted]
Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors
#40Fake Internet points result in all sorts of counterproductive or at least neutrally productive behavior. It's true here on HN. Some people get mad when a link they submitted gets voted up when someone else submits it later.
I love this comment from Github:
> if you look at my contribution chart right now you will notice that it is completely green, why is that (for the people that do not know the trick) I simply commit changing the date manually using this Bash script
Very capably demonstrates how stupid the point-counting is, while at the same time capably playing the stupid game.
But there are arguably positive effects to the gamification. Here on HN, the points give people incentive to browse the NEW list to vote and comment. Getting in on the ground floor of a popular post is the key to getting a lot of upvotes. It also gives people incentive to know what the heck they are posting about, or at least do some basic fact-checking and editing before hitting the button.
On Github the graph incentivizes commitment, which is desirable in open source projects. Taken too far, people will burn out--true. But I bet the opposite is far more common: I bet a lot more promising open source projects die from lack of effort than over-effort.