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Github turns five

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Re: Github turns five

#91

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.

A contribution to https://github.com/defunkt/mofo got me #71 on January 27, 2008 (https://api.github.com/users/uggedal).

Re: Github turns five

#92

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…

Sourceforge was a lot less clunky and inaccessible 10 years ago. In '04/'05 they did a big site redesign that basically killed it. That's part of why github took off, a lot of people were waiting for the next old sourceforge.

Re: Github turns five

#94
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

...installing TeX, waiting 24 hours for your 16MB 486 to generate all the Metafonts...

Re: Github turns five

#95
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What will make Github irrelevant?" A stable github? Edit - this was somewhat flippant, and they do a great job, but when it breaks it can stop me from doing what I need to do next.

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 couldn't get any work done simply as a result of the repo sever going down or having some other issue affecting its reachability."

I had the opposite experience, although an SVN outage would have been worse, I'm used to them being far rarer.

Re: Github turns five

#96
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I didn't mean in terms of numbers. Of course more people use Google, but lets not underestimate the impact Github has had and will continue to have. If you're a developer, Github has essentially become a requirement to have, it's a developers resume. If it weren't for Github the numerous open source contributions I've made as well as projects I've open sourced myself wouldn't have come to fruition, and while my contr…

> it's a developers resume

I keep hearing this on places like HN, yet when I've been applying to software jobs in the real world lately, there's been barely a mention of it.

Re: Github turns five

#97
post #89

What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did. I'm as excited about GitHub as ever.

> What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did.

To be completely fair to Twitter, it's been less than a year since Github raised their first round of funding ($100MM). Twitter has raised $1.6 billion over the last seven years.

It's a lot easier not to sell out when your investors aren't pressuring you to pull a profit yet. (Also remember that almost all of Github's funding comes from a single investor).

I like Github, but it's a bit premature to say that they've "never sold out".

Re: Github turns five

#98
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I've never found the inconsistencies in the API the major learning hurdle for git. If that's the case then it's really too bad since, as you mentioned, it could have been avoided.

For me the hurdle was not the API. That's what documentation is for. It makes learning it inefficient to always check the docs but that's about all.

Re: Github turns five

#99

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.

January 29, 2008. User id 95. :)

Feb 11, 2008, #184 https://api.github.com/users/paul

Re: Github turns five

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean in terms of numbers. Of course more people use Google, but lets not underestimate the impact Github has had and will continue to have. If you're a developer, Github has essentially become a requirement to have, it's a developers resume. If it weren't for Github the numerous open source contributions I've made as well as projects I've open sourced myself wouldn't have come to fruition, and while my contr…

> it's a developers resume I keep hearing this on places like HN, yet when I've been applying to software jobs in the real world lately, there's been barely a mention of it.

Perhaps only part of the resume. As a programmer, seeing real code, quality of commits, and working example projects made a big impression on me when recruiting intern-level developers. Also can see engagement with OSS, if applicable. Would be curious what sort of companies (size, location, focus, developer-to-other ratio) you're applying to and who they're seeking. Thanks!
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