> I am new to programming (less than 1 year) and the insignificance of this project is obvious to me. It's a set of helpers, that are useful for the author and

> I am new to programming (less than 1 year) and the insignificance of this project is obvious to me. It's a set of helpers, that are useful for the author and useful enough to other people that (1) it was upvoted on HN and (2) it has 643 stars on github (so it appears to be fairly popular). > my understanding is that a user friendly wrapper for such a ubiquitous programming tech with already widespread GUIs and pluins is comparable to reinventing a wheel Not really. There are many reasons why these functions are not in core git, however for many people these are common tasks and doing it "manually" with git is a chore. Just like carpenters craft their own jigs and tools all the time, programmers write scripts to automatic repetitive tasks all the time. > My best guess is this was a personal project that solved some person(s) problems, and for some reason related to networking or self-promotion, it got the decoration of a full release treatment. What else could cause this? Most Open Source projects start as personal projects that solved some people's problems, and as others found out that it's useful to them they grow in popularity and become "famous" projects. This one also took the time to make a site, with an introduction, FAQ, etc, while most other projects only have a github page and a small README. If this project doesn't seem useful to you, don't spend much time trying to figure out what it is. The best is to be goal driven, i.e. you have a project you want to get through (either for work, school or personal project) and you seek projects that might help you doing that. > Should I be contributing to the heap of projects like these to further my own career? Don't create projects for the sake of your career, it will only lead to pointless projects boring for you and everyone else. Build what you need to build, what you want to build, and if you think it might be useful for just one other person feel free to post it online. It's not like the size of the Internet is limited and your project will prevent others from existing.