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Github turns five

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Re: Github turns five

#51

Post by mmahemoff »

jacquesm wrote: post #41

Github 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.…

Git's quirks were surely a catalyst, especially helping the company to build momentum as Git grew. But Github added a lot more value than just that. I mean SourceForge was basically from the CVS + SVN era, and those tools were simpler and more intuitive, but SourceForge still served a great need.

I'd say GitHub mainly succeeded because it put code first and overall focused on a great experience for developers to contribute and collaborate. SourceForge, in contrast, was heavily influenced by consumers wanting to download the latest version of FileZilla or some Linux games.

And Google Code, for the brief time it was the main event, took things too far the other direction from SF. It was just too terse and the design too raw, as was customary for Google back then. It actually had the basis for a lot of the critical functionality, but lacked the kind of design flair GitHub has shown. I don't think it was ever seen as a potential profit center, so always seemed starved of the resources to compete with GitHub.

Re: Github turns five

#52

Post by Myrmornis »

jacquesm wrote: post #41

Github 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.…

Github would probably not have succeeded had git's command line interface been better? What rubbish. Github is a fantastic achievement. As aashaykumar92 says, making programming social and with a website that almost looks like it might be fun to normal people?? That's some achievement!

Re: Github turns five

#53

Post by m_mueller »

jmathai wrote: post #42
marssaxman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrapping your head around git takes a long time regardless of your background, because git's interface is incoherent and requires you to understand internal details of its implementation to a degree I haven't seen in a commonly used dev tool since the '80s.

I found learning git to be very similar to learning vim. Nothing felt intuitive. The interface for vim might in fact be unintuitive and that might make learning it take longer. But once you learn it, the un-intuitiveness is no longer a barrier. I don't argue that learning git is difficult no matter what your background is. But that's the nature of a tool that's almost 100% un-opinionated on how you do something. I do…

I don't see how an unintuitive CLI is 'inevitable' or 'in the nature' of such a tool.

How is it inevitable to have inconsistant flags for showing contextual help?

How is it in the nature of such a tool to have command names that are inconsistant (for example 'push' to not be the opposite of 'pull')?

I think in the end these things are relatively small oversights by Torvalds at the beginning, that have become rather difficult to fix now, after git has become such a standard tool - but it makes live really hard for every beginner. I mean imagine a GUI application where the help menu is sometimes accessed through F1, sometimes it's shift-F3. Imagine Edit->Copy would do something completely different than what people are used to form other similar programs. Even worse, in a GUI tool it's no big deal to fix those problems in version 2, but a CLI automatically becomes an API for other higher level tools such as GitHub and changing it would break it afterwards - so it's really important to get that interface right from the start.

Re: Github turns five

#54

Post by gurkendoktor »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #25
beefsack wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard too many people say bad things about Git.

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.

Does that mean that the decision to pull with merge vs rebase will be decided as quickly as 'vim vs emacs' or 'gnome vs KDE'? :)

Re: Github turns five

#55

Post by stiff »

jacquesm wrote: post #41

Github 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.…

Github succeeded because they have build a fantastic platform, order of magnitude smoother, better looking, easier to use and faster than any of the similar projects. Try to navigate http://sourceforge.net/ or http://code.google.com/intl/pl/ for a while to get a feel of how free VC hosting looked like before Github - nobody approached the problem with a normal (in the industry) professional product design approach, it was just developers throwing things together, those are almost showcases for how bad developers can be at user experience design when left by themselves.

Re: Github turns five

#56

Post by DigitalSea »

Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google. Sourceforge was okay, but it felt clunky and inaccessible, not to mention it lacked really any kind of social aspect. Github brought source control to the mainstream and made open source cool again and made it felt like an actual social thing as opposed to single developers making commits without context to a repository.

If it weren't for Github I probably would never have open sourced the amount of work that I have done since its inception nor contributed to the amount of projects I've committed too.

Re: Github turns five

#57

Post by leahculver »

amorphid wrote: post #22
aashaykumar92 wrote: post #9

Congrats on 5 years to Github! They are true pioneers for creating a social network for programmers, and not limiting it to just experienced programmers. I barely knew how to program but I was suggested to try Github with the little HTML/CSS/JS I knew and it is been my favorite, not to mention most effective, way to practice to become a better programmer. Collaborating with fellow hackers on projects is more fun than…

GitHub rocks. I would only switch for the yet to be invented GitGrub. If you'll request is accepted, you get a free burrito.

GrubHub! My favorite Hub. GitHub is second. Though if they partnered...

Re: Github turns five

#58

Post by _pius »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #4

I LOVE github, their little project forever changed the way I think about & write software, and their ideas (blogposts/presentations) about how to build software are truly a massive inspiration for me. PS: Would be awesome to see who has the oldest github account on here. I joined April 20 2008.

February 18th, 2008 (#365)

https://api.github.com/users/pius

Those were the good old days. Hanging out in #merb, just starting to get my feet wet with contributing to open source. Really great memories.

Re: Github turns five

#59

Post by veidr »

DigitalSea wrote: post #56

Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google. Sourceforge was okay, but it felt clunky and inaccessible, not to mention it lacked really any kind of social aspect. Github brought source control to the mainstream and made open source cool again and made it felt like an actual social thing as opposed to single developers making commits without context to a repository. If it weren't for Github I…

> Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google.

I love GitHub as much as the next guy, but 99% of Internet users neither know what git is, nor have any need of it. There are a little more than a million users. (EDIT: well no, there are now 3 million.[2])

By contrast, Google is used by over a billion people every month.[1]

[1]: http://www.statista.com/topics/1001/google/chart/899/unique-...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub

Re: Github turns five

#60

Post by pjmlp »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #31
mserdarsanli wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm to young to know about linux in 1996, but linux in 2013 also seems to fit what you describe.

Imagine linux back in an age before it was possible to search the web for answers to problems you run into. In an age when some of the most popular linux distros not only didn't have advanced install-on-demand internet based package management (e.g. debian) but may not have had any package management at all. Also in an age when plug-and-play was still more a theory than a reality and when hardware support in linux wa…

Oh, memories of installing Slackware Linux from floppies....
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