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I'm going to miss streaks. I don't think it's important that you could technically abuse them with an auto-committer, but it's not like streaks are competetive

I'm going to miss streaks. I don't think it's important that you could technically abuse them with an auto-committer, but it's not like streaks are competetive or anything. They're just a tool to encourage you to contribute to FOSS every day. (rewrote this comment to provide more substance)

hk__2 10y ago
> They're just a tool to encourage you to contribute to FOSS every day. The “every day” is a problem. Contributing to FOSS is a good thing, but encouraging people to write code every single day can lead to unhealthy habits. > but it's not like streaks are competetive or anything There are, just like your number of commits or your number of followers.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I don't think people's unhealthy behaviors are my problem. As someone who doesn't code for my job, having this helped keep me motivated for hobby programming. And I don't think it's inherently "unhealthy" to write code on a weekend. Coding can be fun, and done for enjoyment.
- nv-vn 10y ago
  Writing code every day doesn't necessarily mean doing more than a few short lines. I like to think of it as a mental exercise, like how solving puzzles every day helps you think better. Also, there are days where I have kept a streak just by documenting something or writing up issues of a repository, which are things that don't involve programming but are still useful skill related to programming (and are much more relaxed than havong to write 100 lines of code for some project).
trishume 10y ago
Agreed. The presence of a streak counter on Github did more for my productivity than any other feature or factor. They're a tremendously powerful self-motivation tool. Whenever I'm not on a streak I always find some excuse to sit around and do nothing instead of working on a cool project. A huge portion of all the open source work I've ever done has been because I didn't want to break a Github streak. You could argue that I can always track my streak myself, but the fact that it was a public metric with visible milestones (e.g 100 days) matters. Even though it's a somewhat meaningless vanity metric, I know people will notice it, and people will notice if I miss a day and break it. I don't mind the private repos change as much, but it could do with showing private contributions in a different colour (or maybe a diagonal slice of the box). With private contributions the boxes lose some meaning because now all it tells you is "does this person's employer use Github" rather than showing how much open source work they do.
makecheck 10y ago
I think a more interesting way to do streaks would have been to acknowledge and even encourage occasional time off. Treat them a bit like roller coasters. For instance: the first contribution in a vacuum is 1 point; contributions for X days in a row are worth 3 points each; if you then “miss” only a day or two, you still get 2 points for the next contribution (unless you wait like a month, in which case it becomes 1 again). And to discourage absurd amounts of continuous work and burnout, contributions could also fall to 2 points after something like 14 consecutive days, where they might return to 3 if you take just 1 day off.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  You could test a few of these counting strategies with the API - I'd be interested to see it.

hk__2 10y ago

> They're just a tool to encourage you to contribute to FOSS every day. The “every day” is a problem. Contributing to FOSS is a good thing, but encouraging people to write code every single day can lead to unhealthy habits. > but it's not like streaks are competetive or anything There are, just like your number of commits or your number of followers.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I don't think people's unhealthy behaviors are my problem. As someone who doesn't code for my job, having this helped keep me motivated for hobby programming. And I don't think it's inherently "unhealthy" to write code on a weekend. Coding can be fun, and done for enjoyment.
nv-vn 10y ago
Writing code every day doesn't necessarily mean doing more than a few short lines. I like to think of it as a mental exercise, like how solving puzzles every day helps you think better. Also, there are days where I have kept a streak just by documenting something or writing up issues of a repository, which are things that don't involve programming but are still useful skill related to programming (and are much more relaxed than havong to write 100 lines of code for some project).

trishume 10y ago

Agreed. The presence of a streak counter on Github did more for my productivity than any other feature or factor. They're a tremendously powerful self-motivation tool. Whenever I'm not on a streak I always find some excuse to sit around and do nothing instead of working on a cool project. A huge portion of all the open source work I've ever done has been because I didn't want to break a Github streak. You could argue that I can always track my streak myself, but the fact that it was a public metric with visible milestones (e.g 100 days) matters. Even though it's a somewhat meaningless vanity metric, I know people will notice it, and people will notice if I miss a day and break it. I don't mind the private repos change as much, but it could do with showing private contributions in a different colour (or maybe a diagonal slice of the box). With private contributions the boxes lose some meaning because now all it tells you is "does this person's employer use Github" rather than showing how much open source work they do.

makecheck 10y ago

I think a more interesting way to do streaks would have been to acknowledge and even encourage occasional time off. Treat them a bit like roller coasters. For instance: the first contribution in a vacuum is 1 point; contributions for X days in a row are worth 3 points each; if you then “miss” only a day or two, you still get 2 points for the next contribution (unless you wait like a month, in which case it becomes 1 again). And to discourage absurd amounts of continuous work and burnout, contributions could also fall to 2 points after something like 14 consecutive days, where they might return to 3 if you take just 1 day off.

voltagex_ 10y ago
You could test a few of these counting strategies with the API - I'd be interested to see it.