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Does anybody else feel like GitHub has released more features in the last month than the last 6 months? I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence with all the att

Does anybody else feel like GitHub has released more features in the last month than the last 6 months? I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence with all the attention they've gotten on HN, but these improvements are much appreciated!

morinted 11y ago
It was probably in reaction to the Dear GitHub letter. People were considering migrating away from GitHub and so they got their hands out of their pockets. We all benefit, though, GitHub becomes a better platform for us and they probably become a more successful company.
- grouseway 11y ago
  People who defended them should take note. Complaints can lead to action. Cheering for software companies is as useful as cheering for sports teams. If you go into defence mode whenever someone complains about your favorite VCS, OS, language, platform, editor, start menu, or whatever then you're probably doing it a disservice unless you're disputing factually incorrect information. Posting work-arounds and minimizing others people's complaints isn't helpful.
  - WillAbides 11y ago
    I get what your saying, but the sports analogy might be a bit off. Most sports fans are most critical of their own teams and expect to lose every game.
  - chrisweekly 11y ago
    Home teams have an advantage in most sports, and crowd noise is a factor. More relevant to your point though: encouragement and moral support are important to many OSS projects, where burnout is a particular risk. Maybe not applicable to github per se? /random thoughts
smaili 11y ago
Definitely not a coincidence. Although it certainly begs the question of why this wasn't done earlier given the sheer amount of capital they have.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I'm guessing they didn't realize how annoyed people were. There's a pretty big gulf between "we hear complaints about X" (every company is going to have complaints about their product) and "lots of people, very well known ones, are complaining about X, we should do something about it"
- grinich 11y ago
  They're focused on turning that capital into recurring revenue! i.e. building out the GitHub Enterprise business This is pretty common among companies that make the consumer->enterprise transition. Also see Dropbox, Slack, etc.
  - jasonlotito 11y ago
    > building out the GitHub Enterprise business None of what they just released impacts the GH Enterprise side of things. Maybe it will long down the line, but suffice it to say, none of this sells or keeps customers of GH Enterprise. The reality is, we've questioned our use of GH, and while we are still paying for GHE, it's more or less because it's just not expensive enough at this point to justify switching to something else. We'd have to update some tooling, and migrating would require time. Basically, GHE is a glorified code repository viewer, and even then, it does a substandard job of that. Seriously, the ability to browse and search painful. So yeah, if they are focused on GHE, these features don't suggest that.
    - sdesol 11y ago
      > the ability to browse and search painful Hey just an FYI, we (my company, not GitHub) are working on improving the browsing/searching situation for GitHub and GitHub Enterprise. You can see a list of the improvements at: http://gitsense.github.io/github+gitsense.html http://gitsense.github.io/github+gitsense.html We've only really started advertising in the last 3 months, but what has been quite clear is, people really overestimate what GitHub and their API's are capable of. This is not a criticism against GitHub, but more of a high praise for how well they have cultivated the GitHub brand. People really think GitHub not implementing commits search, or not being able to search forked repositories (which is pretty bad from an Enterprise point of view), is because it's not sexy, which is why they haven't implemented it yet. And when they see what we are capable of doing with GitHub, they just assume we are using GitHub's API, when in reality, the only time we use GitHub's API is to get somebody's avatar. We obviously can't complain though, as it provides us with a business opportunity.
nightpool 11y ago
The problem with github is that every time something about them comes up, everybody has their own ideas about what the "most critical" thing that Github "needs" to do is. Tracking and collecting those, doing their own user studies to find pain points, making sure you're not hurting existing behavior, all of this stuff takes a lot of time to get right. I'm not surprised that they have long fallow periods followed by quick bursts of updates.
mdo 11y ago
Code review tooling has been in the works for a long time. It's sadly taking us this long to actually ship the first fundamental bits, but there's a ton that this unlocks for us. Expect to see more soon :). (Source: I worked on code review at GitHub for awhile!)
- Pxtl 11y ago
  In that case, is there any plans for your processes to change to get a more rapid release-cycle? Going dark for N months to implement a feature seems to fly in the face of the workflow GitHub tends to inspire.
  - mdo 11y ago
    I think the goal is to ship a lot more, yes :D.
  - jdavis703 11y ago
    Sometimes you're on a rapid release cycle making non-user facing changes that will allow you to release new user-facing features. I have no idea if this is what was going on at Github, but I've been at plenty of places where the code and/or infrastructure was so messed up, seemingly trivial updates would take weeks and months to complete.
baudehlo 11y ago
My guess is the switch from zero management to a more top down approach made the top realize nothing was moving forwards. GitHub had been stagnating for a while until then. But I could easily be wrong.
akerro 11y ago
GitHub is still far behind GitLab.

morinted 11y ago

It was probably in reaction to the Dear GitHub letter. People were considering migrating away from GitHub and so they got their hands out of their pockets. We all benefit, though, GitHub becomes a better platform for us and they probably become a more successful company.

grouseway 11y ago
People who defended them should take note. Complaints can lead to action. Cheering for software companies is as useful as cheering for sports teams. If you go into defence mode whenever someone complains about your favorite VCS, OS, language, platform, editor, start menu, or whatever then you're probably doing it a disservice unless you're disputing factually incorrect information. Posting work-arounds and minimizing others people's complaints isn't helpful.
- WillAbides 11y ago
  I get what your saying, but the sports analogy might be a bit off. Most sports fans are most critical of their own teams and expect to lose every game.
- chrisweekly 11y ago
  Home teams have an advantage in most sports, and crowd noise is a factor. More relevant to your point though: encouragement and moral support are important to many OSS projects, where burnout is a particular risk. Maybe not applicable to github per se? /random thoughts

smaili 11y ago

Definitely not a coincidence. Although it certainly begs the question of why this wasn't done earlier given the sheer amount of capital they have.

Karunamon 11y ago
I'm guessing they didn't realize how annoyed people were. There's a pretty big gulf between "we hear complaints about X" (every company is going to have complaints about their product) and "lots of people, very well known ones, are complaining about X, we should do something about it"
grinich 11y ago
They're focused on turning that capital into recurring revenue! i.e. building out the GitHub Enterprise business This is pretty common among companies that make the consumer->enterprise transition. Also see Dropbox, Slack, etc.
- jasonlotito 11y ago
  > building out the GitHub Enterprise business None of what they just released impacts the GH Enterprise side of things. Maybe it will long down the line, but suffice it to say, none of this sells or keeps customers of GH Enterprise. The reality is, we've questioned our use of GH, and while we are still paying for GHE, it's more or less because it's just not expensive enough at this point to justify switching to something else. We'd have to update some tooling, and migrating would require time. Basically, GHE is a glorified code repository viewer, and even then, it does a substandard job of that. Seriously, the ability to browse and search painful. So yeah, if they are focused on GHE, these features don't suggest that.
  - sdesol 11y ago
    > the ability to browse and search painful Hey just an FYI, we (my company, not GitHub) are working on improving the browsing/searching situation for GitHub and GitHub Enterprise. You can see a list of the improvements at: http://gitsense.github.io/github+gitsense.html http://gitsense.github.io/github+gitsense.html We've only really started advertising in the last 3 months, but what has been quite clear is, people really overestimate what GitHub and their API's are capable of. This is not a criticism against GitHub, but more of a high praise for how well they have cultivated the GitHub brand. People really think GitHub not implementing commits search, or not being able to search forked repositories (which is pretty bad from an Enterprise point of view), is because it's not sexy, which is why they haven't implemented it yet. And when they see what we are capable of doing with GitHub, they just assume we are using GitHub's API, when in reality, the only time we use GitHub's API is to get somebody's avatar. We obviously can't complain though, as it provides us with a business opportunity.

nightpool 11y ago

The problem with github is that every time something about them comes up, everybody has their own ideas about what the "most critical" thing that Github "needs" to do is. Tracking and collecting those, doing their own user studies to find pain points, making sure you're not hurting existing behavior, all of this stuff takes a lot of time to get right. I'm not surprised that they have long fallow periods followed by quick bursts of updates.

mdo 11y ago

Code review tooling has been in the works for a long time. It's sadly taking us this long to actually ship the first fundamental bits, but there's a ton that this unlocks for us. Expect to see more soon :). (Source: I worked on code review at GitHub for awhile!)

Pxtl 11y ago
In that case, is there any plans for your processes to change to get a more rapid release-cycle? Going dark for N months to implement a feature seems to fly in the face of the workflow GitHub tends to inspire.
- mdo 11y ago
  I think the goal is to ship a lot more, yes :D.
- jdavis703 11y ago
  Sometimes you're on a rapid release cycle making non-user facing changes that will allow you to release new user-facing features. I have no idea if this is what was going on at Github, but I've been at plenty of places where the code and/or infrastructure was so messed up, seemingly trivial updates would take weeks and months to complete.

baudehlo 11y ago

My guess is the switch from zero management to a more top down approach made the top realize nothing was moving forwards. GitHub had been stagnating for a while until then. But I could easily be wrong.

akerro 11y ago

GitHub is still far behind GitLab.