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I think the site is nice - it's clean and directly to the point. No huge hero and no click-throughs to get to the meat of your project. Prices for your posters

by lolsal 10y ago

I think the site is nice - it's clean and directly to the point. No huge hero and no click-throughs to get to the meat of your project. Prices for your posters seem entirely reasonable. Tangent: I don't understand the fascination with one's own commit heatmap (or any other commit heatmap for that matter). Maybe it seems a bit too self-congratulatory? Vain? I don't know quite what it is, but it rubs me the wrong way and I wouldn't be interested in putting something up like that in my home or office. Maybe because it implies quantity over quality? Whatever the reason, your poster project is nice regardless of whether or not I would buy one.

alexpersian 10y ago
Purely bragging rights.
stocktech 10y ago
A team commit heatmap would be great for the office tho...
- aarondf 10y ago
  That's a great idea
- city41 10y ago
  In that case, I think it'd be more interesting to throw it up on a large monitor and have it update every day.
jastanton 10y ago
Yeah I think it's a sense of accomplishment. You worked on something really hard and seeing data to reflect that is fun. That said posting it on a wall to say "Hey look what I've done" its a bit much for me. But I would defintely buy a poster for my engineering team, that would fantastic!
tomek_zemla 10y ago
Many technical writers use GitHub to write books so this makes it into the record of one's dedication to the 'streak' of consistent work. Nice history of how something (book, app version 1.0) was produced.
jonshariat 10y ago
They way I look at it, its not about how many big dots you have, it tells the story of your time on that project. I'd love to get this for my team after a major release. "Ah heres when the whole site went down one Saturday" "This was when we left for the week long offsite" "Here is where we released and had to make a bunch of hotfixes but then look here we rarely had that problem after..."
sdesol 10y ago
> or any other commit heatmap for that matter The problem with heatmaps and how they are currently used by popular tools, is they only provide novelty metrics. That is, metrics that are interesting to look at and nothing more. Commit heatmaps are actually quite useful for answering a lot of questions, if used properly. Here's an example, that shows how they can be used to help you navigate to the first commit. https://gitsense.com/first-commit.mp4 https://gitsense.com/first-commit.mp4 They can be used to provide visual aid, to show how frequently certain files are modified. https://gitsense.com/track-files.mp4 https://gitsense.com/track-files.mp4
- wingerlang 10y ago
  The second example is quite nice, I think. But the first one will only work for the first commit, you can't really pinpoint any other one. Using a heatmap for that is probably even overkill.
  - sdesol 10y ago
    > you can't really pinpoint any other one Yeah the heatmap only really shines when it's sparse, as the noise can be too much. The heatmap is intended to be used as a secondary visual aid. What I normally recommend, is for people to use the line chart first, to help select larger swaths of time. And if you need to, use the heatmap to help you drill further. Below is an example of what I mean. https://gitsense.com/search.mp4 https://gitsense.com/search.mp4 There are still a lot of ways to improve the heatmap by using animation and other tricks, but I don't have the time to experiment with these ideas.
- lolsal 10y ago
  This is pretty interesting, but I don't know how useful it would be for me. Part of why I feel that way would be just because I don't have those use cases. I guess part of it is I don't use GitHub as a UI to my repos either. When I want to find this information out I go exploring with log/blame.
  - sdesol 10y ago

by lolsal 10y ago

alexpersian 10y ago

Purely bragging rights.

stocktech 10y ago

A team commit heatmap would be great for the office tho...

aarondf 10y ago
That's a great idea
city41 10y ago
In that case, I think it'd be more interesting to throw it up on a large monitor and have it update every day.

jastanton 10y ago

Yeah I think it's a sense of accomplishment. You worked on something really hard and seeing data to reflect that is fun. That said posting it on a wall to say "Hey look what I've done" its a bit much for me. But I would defintely buy a poster for my engineering team, that would fantastic!

tomek_zemla 10y ago

Many technical writers use GitHub to write books so this makes it into the record of one's dedication to the 'streak' of consistent work. Nice history of how something (book, app version 1.0) was produced.

jonshariat 10y ago

They way I look at it, its not about how many big dots you have, it tells the story of your time on that project. I'd love to get this for my team after a major release. "Ah heres when the whole site went down one Saturday" "This was when we left for the week long offsite" "Here is where we released and had to make a bunch of hotfixes but then look here we rarely had that problem after..."

sdesol 10y ago

> or any other commit heatmap for that matter The problem with heatmaps and how they are currently used by popular tools, is they only provide novelty metrics. That is, metrics that are interesting to look at and nothing more. Commit heatmaps are actually quite useful for answering a lot of questions, if used properly. Here's an example, that shows how they can be used to help you navigate to the first commit. https://gitsense.com/first-commit.mp4 https://gitsense.com/first-commit.mp4 They can be used to provide visual aid, to show how frequently certain files are modified. https://gitsense.com/track-files.mp4 https://gitsense.com/track-files.mp4

wingerlang 10y ago
The second example is quite nice, I think. But the first one will only work for the first commit, you can't really pinpoint any other one. Using a heatmap for that is probably even overkill.
- sdesol 10y ago
  > you can't really pinpoint any other one Yeah the heatmap only really shines when it's sparse, as the noise can be too much. The heatmap is intended to be used as a secondary visual aid. What I normally recommend, is for people to use the line chart first, to help select larger swaths of time. And if you need to, use the heatmap to help you drill further. Below is an example of what I mean. https://gitsense.com/search.mp4 https://gitsense.com/search.mp4 There are still a lot of ways to improve the heatmap by using animation and other tricks, but I don't have the time to experiment with these ideas.
lolsal 10y ago
This is pretty interesting, but I don't know how useful it would be for me. Part of why I feel that way would be just because I don't have those use cases. I guess part of it is I don't use GitHub as a UI to my repos either. When I want to find this information out I go exploring with log/blame.
- sdesol 10y ago