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Must be fun for @sytse to watch these GitHub announcements every year, where they consistently release the same thing GitLab rolled out two years prior. Codesp

Must be fun for @sytse to watch these GitHub announcements every year, where they consistently release the same thing GitLab rolled out two years prior. Codespaces -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/ Insights -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ GH Actions -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/ etc

tommoor 6y ago
I'm sure he'll have his usual blogpost moaning about how Gitlab already has it by end of day.
- sytse 6y ago
  Why wait until the end of the day on the west coast? :) We just posted https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/06/git-challenge/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/06/git-challenge/ where we encourage you to compare: 1. GitHub Insights with GitLab Insights, Contribution Analytics, Issues Analytics, Productivity Analytics, Value Stream Analytics, DevOps Score, Code Review Analytics, and CI/CD Analytics. 2. GitHub security features with GitLab Container Scanning, Dependency List, Dependency Scanning, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), Security Dashboard, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), and Secrets Detection. 3. GitHub Codespaces with the GitLab Web IDE, CI/CD Environments, Review apps, and Live Preview.
  - sparky_ 6y ago
    I'd definitely encourage everyone to git GL a try - our teams switched over from GH + Jira about a year ago, and haven't looked back. The integrated CI and project management features are a game changer.
    - jesselawson 6y ago
      I have to agree. I have been a big champion of GH but the more I use GL the more I keep asking myself why I don't just do all my stuff in GL.
    - tomstoms 6y ago
      Git it a try, pun intended? :-D
      - sparky_ 6y ago
        'Twas a simple typo, but I'll happily retcon it into a pun!
  - qu83rt 6y ago
    GitLab is also faster at cloning than GitHub. Whenever I have to clone a bunch of website repos to update templates for my website generator the GitLab repos finish cloning first even though I start them last.
- factorialboy 6y ago
  To be fair, nothing was announced today by GH that wasn't in GL for several years. Perhaps the quality of VS Code trumps GL WebIDE ... But I am not the sort of developer to ditch my desktop editors / IDEs for something running in a browser (electron or otherwise).
  - sdesol 6y ago
    I think the most important thing that most people maybe forgetting is, GitHub maybe announcing these features, but these features were the results of acquiring companies that were solely focused on these features for years. So if you take this into consideration, GitHub's feature has not only been in works for a while, but they have been refined to a point that GitLab will have a hard time catching up to. There is no way GitLab will be able to compete on the IDE front-end for a while since GitHub's solution is essentially VSCode which they own and is iterated on at an incredible rate. And the one thing Microsoft hasn't made open source, that makes remote work incredibility powerful, is what makes Codespace incredibility difficult for GitLab to compete with. Their security scan feature is the result of acquiring a leader in the field with expertise that GitLab will have a hard time matching/hiring for. And GitHub's Insights feature is the result of multiple acquisitions with years of previous experience. These announcements maybe new, but the solutions that GitHub has released are years ahead of GitLab's existing solution.
    - ablekh 6y ago
      I think that you are wrong on VS Code Remote not being open source. Here is the relevant repository: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release. Corresponding official documentation (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview) states that Visual Studio Codespaces is essentially a managed service of Visual Studio Code Remote Development. BTW, there is also an interesting alternative, the `code-server` project (https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server). P.S. FYI: The TLS certificate on https://gitsense.com https://gitsense.com has expired.
      - 6y ago
klysm 6y ago
GH is clearly not innovating nearly as much as GitLab and hasn’t been for a long time, but since they have so a huge chunk of the market already they can see what works and what doesn’t work for GitLab and cherry pick what they like. Apple operates in a very similar manner - in many areas they lag behind.
- wiredone 6y ago
  I'm not sure this is correct. GH seems to take their time, and get things right. They're product leadership is really top tier compared to the rest of the tools providers who are often quick to release a feature half-baked hoping to iterate. I've rarely seen a GH feature that's not fully polished and "makes sense" on day 1. They are the Apple of the dev tools space. Less is nearly always more.
  - Mikushi 6y ago
    Can't really agree on that, looking at Github Actions for example. It's such a lack luster offering with severe limitations that make it almost unusable for any sort of serious project (no support for private Docker repository, no manual steps, yaml support is abyssmal, ...)
- curryst 6y ago
  My view is that GitLab is more prone to feature creep. They have a lot of innovative features, but because of the number of features, most of them really only feel 90% or 95% of the way there. GitHub chooses a smaller number of features, but they feel more polished. I don't think the feature creep is all bad. Sometimes the new features are amazingly useful, if not totally polished. It depends on what you need, and sometimes you need features that only GitLab has.
acdha 6y ago
This isn't really a useful observation — it's not like any of those were something unique which nobody had thought of before GitLab implemented them, either. It'd be far more useful to compare them knowledgeably and talk about their respective benefits and drawbacks.
Austin_Conlon 6y ago
How do the implementations compare?
- mplewis 6y ago
  In this case, they don't. Codespaces offers a lot more functionality than the GitLab web IDE.
gmaster1440 6y ago
VS Code online is a substantially more robust offering than the GitLab Web IDE. Not an apples to apples comparison of the actual substance of the offerings here.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
BTW I've seen the same thing on Zoho side, they have so many products and they all work seamlessly across one another, yet they have a very little market share.
threeseed 6y ago
Gitlab is a bit of a mess though: a) Gitlab.com is ridiculously slow. Even the CEO admits they failed to invest in it. b) You can't disable features you don't need so you end up with a sidebar full of Kubernetes and Security features for a Git project dedicated to documentation. c) Staggering amount of open issues and merge requests so you feel discouraged from even raising anything since it just gets lost in the weeds. d) On the main Git project screen there are 15 buttons. Including again ones for "Add Kubernetes cluster" or "Add License" which you can't remove or hide even though it's irrelevant for 99% of Git projects. e) Feature set and billing are all over the place. It has great project/issue management but in order to get say roadmaps you need to have everyone in your team on the $99/month plan. Even though they aren't developers. So in some cases Gitlab ends up being much more expensive than Jira + Github. I could keep going. But Gitlab is an example of a company that is moving too fast and needs much better product management. I would take Github's more deliberate approach any day.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  We host our own GitLab instance and it's been great. Performance is way better than the public GitLab site and it's been dependable. It would be nice to disable some of the features but, overall, everyone at my company is happy.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  I agree that there are loads of open Gitlab issues, but I’ve found that their team are really easy to communicate with, really open to feedback and somehow also respond really quickly on issues. I like that they use Gitlab for so much and that they’re still really open to hearing about a workflow that’s different to theirs and keen to help with that. As a user I really like that they have their tickets open like that. I’d never contact Github and tell them about some minor feature that would be helpful or give them feedback on a new feature they’ve released because how would you even do that in a way that’s not annoying? And with Gitlab you often get to feed in at the design stage which you’re completely shut out from anywhere else. I’m not sure if you’ve actually had issues go missing - I know they have loads of repos and I’ve only engaged with a few - but my experience definitely hasn’t been that things get lost in the weeds. For what it’s worth I agree with all the extra features being too visible. I kinda get it - one day I’ll get round to learning Kubernetes and I’ll probably do something with Gitlab’s integration when I do - but while I don’t use them those features are definitely too visible and add too much clutter.
ShakataGaNai 6y ago
This is a "Good Thing" for everyone involved. Look at Android vs iOS. Each release sees popular features "borrowed" from the competition. Back and forth Google takes something Apple did well, then Apple turns around and does the same. Tight competition between two platforms gives us, the consumers/users, the best. It drives innovation, it drives down prices (I mean, lets be honest, GitLab had the entire "free" thing down a LONG time ago), and the features that we do have get refined to be even better.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Yeah, well good luck with that one. With this feature, MS just ventured in a space where no-one can compare yet. If this ever gets popular, that's check mate right here.
- mikewhy 6y ago
  Was this reply to the wrong comment? Cause your first line is a total non sequitur to what you're replying to. And this is definitely a space people both a) can compare (compete?) and b) MS is playing catchup to (albeit with a great advantage).
bdcravens 6y ago
The bigger question is, how far will "but we did it first!" carry a business? After all, Github wins that battle on the core feature set.
twblalock 6y ago
Competition is good for customers. I don't care who had the feature first.

tommoor 6y ago

I'm sure he'll have his usual blogpost moaning about how Gitlab already has it by end of day.

sytse 6y ago
Why wait until the end of the day on the west coast? :) We just posted https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/06/git-challenge/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/06/git-challenge/ where we encourage you to compare: 1. GitHub Insights with GitLab Insights, Contribution Analytics, Issues Analytics, Productivity Analytics, Value Stream Analytics, DevOps Score, Code Review Analytics, and CI/CD Analytics. 2. GitHub security features with GitLab Container Scanning, Dependency List, Dependency Scanning, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST), Security Dashboard, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), and Secrets Detection. 3. GitHub Codespaces with the GitLab Web IDE, CI/CD Environments, Review apps, and Live Preview.
- sparky_ 6y ago
  I'd definitely encourage everyone to git GL a try - our teams switched over from GH + Jira about a year ago, and haven't looked back. The integrated CI and project management features are a game changer.
  - jesselawson 6y ago
    I have to agree. I have been a big champion of GH but the more I use GL the more I keep asking myself why I don't just do all my stuff in GL.
  - tomstoms 6y ago
    Git it a try, pun intended? :-D
    - sparky_ 6y ago
      'Twas a simple typo, but I'll happily retcon it into a pun!
- qu83rt 6y ago
  GitLab is also faster at cloning than GitHub. Whenever I have to clone a bunch of website repos to update templates for my website generator the GitLab repos finish cloning first even though I start them last.
factorialboy 6y ago
To be fair, nothing was announced today by GH that wasn't in GL for several years. Perhaps the quality of VS Code trumps GL WebIDE ... But I am not the sort of developer to ditch my desktop editors / IDEs for something running in a browser (electron or otherwise).
- sdesol 6y ago
  I think the most important thing that most people maybe forgetting is, GitHub maybe announcing these features, but these features were the results of acquiring companies that were solely focused on these features for years. So if you take this into consideration, GitHub's feature has not only been in works for a while, but they have been refined to a point that GitLab will have a hard time catching up to. There is no way GitLab will be able to compete on the IDE front-end for a while since GitHub's solution is essentially VSCode which they own and is iterated on at an incredible rate. And the one thing Microsoft hasn't made open source, that makes remote work incredibility powerful, is what makes Codespace incredibility difficult for GitLab to compete with. Their security scan feature is the result of acquiring a leader in the field with expertise that GitLab will have a hard time matching/hiring for. And GitHub's Insights feature is the result of multiple acquisitions with years of previous experience. These announcements maybe new, but the solutions that GitHub has released are years ahead of GitLab's existing solution.
  - ablekh 6y ago
    I think that you are wrong on VS Code Remote not being open source. Here is the relevant repository: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release. Corresponding official documentation (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview) states that Visual Studio Codespaces is essentially a managed service of Visual Studio Code Remote Development. BTW, there is also an interesting alternative, the `code-server` project (https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server). P.S. FYI: The TLS certificate on https://gitsense.com https://gitsense.com has expired.
    - 6y ago

klysm 6y ago

GH is clearly not innovating nearly as much as GitLab and hasn’t been for a long time, but since they have so a huge chunk of the market already they can see what works and what doesn’t work for GitLab and cherry pick what they like. Apple operates in a very similar manner - in many areas they lag behind.

wiredone 6y ago
I'm not sure this is correct. GH seems to take their time, and get things right. They're product leadership is really top tier compared to the rest of the tools providers who are often quick to release a feature half-baked hoping to iterate. I've rarely seen a GH feature that's not fully polished and "makes sense" on day 1. They are the Apple of the dev tools space. Less is nearly always more.
- Mikushi 6y ago
  Can't really agree on that, looking at Github Actions for example. It's such a lack luster offering with severe limitations that make it almost unusable for any sort of serious project (no support for private Docker repository, no manual steps, yaml support is abyssmal, ...)
curryst 6y ago
My view is that GitLab is more prone to feature creep. They have a lot of innovative features, but because of the number of features, most of them really only feel 90% or 95% of the way there. GitHub chooses a smaller number of features, but they feel more polished. I don't think the feature creep is all bad. Sometimes the new features are amazingly useful, if not totally polished. It depends on what you need, and sometimes you need features that only GitLab has.

acdha 6y ago

This isn't really a useful observation — it's not like any of those were something unique which nobody had thought of before GitLab implemented them, either. It'd be far more useful to compare them knowledgeably and talk about their respective benefits and drawbacks.

Austin_Conlon 6y ago

How do the implementations compare?

mplewis 6y ago
In this case, they don't. Codespaces offers a lot more functionality than the GitLab web IDE.

gmaster1440 6y ago

VS Code online is a substantially more robust offering than the GitLab Web IDE. Not an apples to apples comparison of the actual substance of the offerings here.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

BTW I've seen the same thing on Zoho side, they have so many products and they all work seamlessly across one another, yet they have a very little market share.

threeseed 6y ago

Gitlab is a bit of a mess though: a) Gitlab.com is ridiculously slow. Even the CEO admits they failed to invest in it. b) You can't disable features you don't need so you end up with a sidebar full of Kubernetes and Security features for a Git project dedicated to documentation. c) Staggering amount of open issues and merge requests so you feel discouraged from even raising anything since it just gets lost in the weeds. d) On the main Git project screen there are 15 buttons. Including again ones for "Add Kubernetes cluster" or "Add License" which you can't remove or hide even though it's irrelevant for 99% of Git projects. e) Feature set and billing are all over the place. It has great project/issue management but in order to get say roadmaps you need to have everyone in your team on the $99/month plan. Even though they aren't developers. So in some cases Gitlab ends up being much more expensive than Jira + Github. I could keep going. But Gitlab is an example of a company that is moving too fast and needs much better product management. I would take Github's more deliberate approach any day.

cmiles74 6y ago
We host our own GitLab instance and it's been great. Performance is way better than the public GitLab site and it's been dependable. It would be nice to disable some of the features but, overall, everyone at my company is happy.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
I agree that there are loads of open Gitlab issues, but I’ve found that their team are really easy to communicate with, really open to feedback and somehow also respond really quickly on issues. I like that they use Gitlab for so much and that they’re still really open to hearing about a workflow that’s different to theirs and keen to help with that. As a user I really like that they have their tickets open like that. I’d never contact Github and tell them about some minor feature that would be helpful or give them feedback on a new feature they’ve released because how would you even do that in a way that’s not annoying? And with Gitlab you often get to feed in at the design stage which you’re completely shut out from anywhere else. I’m not sure if you’ve actually had issues go missing - I know they have loads of repos and I’ve only engaged with a few - but my experience definitely hasn’t been that things get lost in the weeds. For what it’s worth I agree with all the extra features being too visible. I kinda get it - one day I’ll get round to learning Kubernetes and I’ll probably do something with Gitlab’s integration when I do - but while I don’t use them those features are definitely too visible and add too much clutter.

ShakataGaNai 6y ago

This is a "Good Thing" for everyone involved. Look at Android vs iOS. Each release sees popular features "borrowed" from the competition. Back and forth Google takes something Apple did well, then Apple turns around and does the same. Tight competition between two platforms gives us, the consumers/users, the best. It drives innovation, it drives down prices (I mean, lets be honest, GitLab had the entire "free" thing down a LONG time ago), and the features that we do have get refined to be even better.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Yeah, well good luck with that one. With this feature, MS just ventured in a space where no-one can compare yet. If this ever gets popular, that's check mate right here.

mikewhy 6y ago
Was this reply to the wrong comment? Cause your first line is a total non sequitur to what you're replying to. And this is definitely a space people both a) can compare (compete?) and b) MS is playing catchup to (albeit with a great advantage).

bdcravens 6y ago

The bigger question is, how far will "but we did it first!" carry a business? After all, Github wins that battle on the core feature set.

twblalock 6y ago

Competition is good for customers. I don't care who had the feature first.