12 ms·

The Go language's first commit (1972)

150 points by arraypad 5y ago

zarakshR 5y ago
How would that even work if git was released in 2005? Am I missing something?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  A date is just a number in a file. You can create Git commits with any date you want.
  - rgoulter 5y ago
    For the sake of interest, not quite any date. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-... e.g. this repo which represented the US constitution in a Git repository couldn't use the actual dates it wanted to. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution#who-made-the-change https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution#who-made-...
    - samatman 5y ago
      Yes and this actually matters. Not allowing the creation of repos of historical data with correct timestamps is a bad design decision, not an inevitability.
- zegl 5y ago
  It’s just a joke. When creating a commit, you can override the timestamp to whatever you want.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    Reminds me of https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar
- iib 5y ago
  You can modify the git history to your liking. There are tools for that, like reposurgeon [1]. [1] https://gitlab.com/esr/reposurgeon https://gitlab.com/esr/reposurgeon
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Obviously, code that old couldn't have been originally committed to git. But it is quite common to have old repositories migrated to git and one would expect the original time stamps been maintained after the migration.
  - bregma 5y ago
    In 1972 the web was still only available in black and white and a typical consumer laptop was the size of a steamer trunk.
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Sorry, what do you want to say with that? I was talking in general, why Git repositories might contain commits which precede the creation of Git by a large amount. And I am sure, while no one committed the code in 1972 to any kind of repository, that the code snipped with its date is genuine. At that time Kernighan was working with other legends off the Unix world on Unix and the C language.
    - avgcorrection 5y ago
      There existed VCSs in 1972.
- noselasd 5y ago
  I have git repos with commits from before 2005 in projects converted from cvs, to subversion to git.
Hammonds69 5y ago
[dead]
habibur 5y ago
This was done as a joke. Go was released. Someone else claimed he owns the name "Go" for a programming language. As a proof his github "go language" creation and commit date was shown. This wasn't fake, was real. Google surely won't give up for this reason. Few days later google extended their go commit to 1972. Preceding that author's date by a long shot. Guess you can find the news coverage from that time if you search.
- p_l 5y ago
  Well, it's half joke if you know Go's history, but the half serious part would make that commit also the first commit of C++ and Objective-C
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  The "Go!" language, right? I mean the language was first IIRC.
- throwawaygjdbsj 5y ago
  Shitty joke. It was bought up in issue 9 in the golang repo and was a pretty big deal at the time. I still think they should have renamed go to "nine". Alas Google had no problem just steamrolling the guy and then pissing on ten years of his work with a go fuck yourself in the form of this commit. https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9
  - bargle0 5y ago
    Not unlike Apple steamrolling the Swift language from ANL. https://www.anl.gov/mcs/swift-fast-parallel-scripting-language https://www.anl.gov/mcs/swift-fast-parallel-scripting-langua...
  - geodel 5y ago
    Perhaps pretty big deal for you. If it were pretty big deal in general we would have seen at least some copyright violation case about it.
    - 5y ago
vkoskiv 5y ago
So any thoughts on this company, Repography? Their dashboards look really cool, but the only way to give them a go with my own repositories is to authorize their Github app to "Act on my behalf", whatever that means, or to curl some unknown code and pipe that into bash locally on my machine. Neither option is one I'm particularly fond of trying, without additional assurances that this is a legit org. I don't know. I just feel like they could have spent a bit more time convincing me it's safe to do that authorization thing. Likewise, I could have downloaded their script and audited it before running - I just don't have the time to do that right now.
- arraypad 5y ago
  Hi, I'm Arpad, one half of Repography. There's an entry in our FAQ [1] about this. We only use OAuth to identify your GitHub account and then the GitHub app installation has much better defined permissions. I'd love to be able to restrict the OAuth scope even further but GitHub doesn't let us. I've heard this concern a couple of times now so I'll have another look. I can hopefully at least improve how it's presented and communicated so it's more reassuring! [1] https://repography.com/faq https://repography.com/faq
  - red2awn 5y ago
    The back button is broken on your website.
alfredbez 5y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371029 (from 2016)
mrdoe 5y ago
Where are the cool free projects? This repography is yet another product that wants my money.
- sulam 5y ago
  Their developers decided donating their time to a bunch of demanding know-it-alls with no appreciation for their work was a bad deal for them.
- samhw 5y ago
  Yes, this is actually not unusual. People need food, water, shelter, and suchlike in order to survive, and so they exchange their labour for goods and services. Money is a helpful token now rather widely used in this bartering process. I know it's quite common in the web development community to take a lot of freely provided code which took immense labour to write, and then stitch it together, in a way that requires very little skill or effort, in order to sell the result - but this isn't the norm in the world at large.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
NFT sale when?
TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
This seems to be a joke, but I was expecting it might be serious, because (AIUI) the Go compiler is derived from the Plan 9 C compiler. Of course, that was probably not started in 1972, but it does mean Go's source code is older than the language itself.
- hobomatic 5y ago
  One of the more strikingly recognizable steps along the way is the alef programming language, also a plan9/bell labs baby.
kleton 5y ago
Presumably the original first commit was a CL on perforce, and copybara did not yet exist, so they arbitrarily did this when exporting to git.
ksherlock 5y ago
There seems to be a lot of confusion. Check out the GIT_AUTHOR_DATE (or git commit --date) and GIT_COMMITTER_DATE environment variables for more insight.
roboyoshi 5y ago
Russ cox wrote about it too: https://research.swtch.com/govcs https://research.swtch.com/govcs

150 points by arraypad 5y ago

zarakshR 5y ago

How would that even work if git was released in 2005? Am I missing something?

chrisseaton 5y ago
A date is just a number in a file. You can create Git commits with any date you want.
- rgoulter 5y ago
  For the sake of interest, not quite any date. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-to-set-a-git-commit-to-have-a-timestamp-prior-to-1970 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21787872/is-it-possible-... e.g. this repo which represented the US constitution in a Git repository couldn't use the actual dates it wanted to. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution#who-made-the-change https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/USA-Constitution#who-made-...
  - samatman 5y ago
    Yes and this actually matters. Not allowing the creation of repos of historical data with correct timestamps is a bad design decision, not an inevitability.
zegl 5y ago
It’s just a joke. When creating a commit, you can override the timestamp to whatever you want.
- csunbird 5y ago
  Reminds me of https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar
iib 5y ago
You can modify the git history to your liking. There are tools for that, like reposurgeon [1]. [1] https://gitlab.com/esr/reposurgeon https://gitlab.com/esr/reposurgeon
_ph_ 5y ago
Obviously, code that old couldn't have been originally committed to git. But it is quite common to have old repositories migrated to git and one would expect the original time stamps been maintained after the migration.
- bregma 5y ago
  In 1972 the web was still only available in black and white and a typical consumer laptop was the size of a steamer trunk.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Sorry, what do you want to say with that? I was talking in general, why Git repositories might contain commits which precede the creation of Git by a large amount. And I am sure, while no one committed the code in 1972 to any kind of repository, that the code snipped with its date is genuine. At that time Kernighan was working with other legends off the Unix world on Unix and the C language.
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    There existed VCSs in 1972.
noselasd 5y ago
I have git repos with commits from before 2005 in projects converted from cvs, to subversion to git.

Hammonds69 5y ago

[dead]

habibur 5y ago

This was done as a joke. Go was released. Someone else claimed he owns the name "Go" for a programming language. As a proof his github "go language" creation and commit date was shown. This wasn't fake, was real. Google surely won't give up for this reason. Few days later google extended their go commit to 1972. Preceding that author's date by a long shot. Guess you can find the news coverage from that time if you search.

p_l 5y ago
Well, it's half joke if you know Go's history, but the half serious part would make that commit also the first commit of C++ and Objective-C
LAC-Tech 5y ago
The "Go!" language, right? I mean the language was first IIRC.
throwawaygjdbsj 5y ago
Shitty joke. It was bought up in issue 9 in the golang repo and was a pretty big deal at the time. I still think they should have renamed go to "nine". Alas Google had no problem just steamrolling the guy and then pissing on ten years of his work with a go fuck yourself in the form of this commit. https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9
- bargle0 5y ago
  Not unlike Apple steamrolling the Swift language from ANL. https://www.anl.gov/mcs/swift-fast-parallel-scripting-language https://www.anl.gov/mcs/swift-fast-parallel-scripting-langua...
- geodel 5y ago
  Perhaps pretty big deal for you. If it were pretty big deal in general we would have seen at least some copyright violation case about it.
  - 5y ago

vkoskiv 5y ago

So any thoughts on this company, Repography? Their dashboards look really cool, but the only way to give them a go with my own repositories is to authorize their Github app to "Act on my behalf", whatever that means, or to curl some unknown code and pipe that into bash locally on my machine. Neither option is one I'm particularly fond of trying, without additional assurances that this is a legit org. I don't know. I just feel like they could have spent a bit more time convincing me it's safe to do that authorization thing. Likewise, I could have downloaded their script and audited it before running - I just don't have the time to do that right now.

arraypad 5y ago
Hi, I'm Arpad, one half of Repography. There's an entry in our FAQ [1] about this. We only use OAuth to identify your GitHub account and then the GitHub app installation has much better defined permissions. I'd love to be able to restrict the OAuth scope even further but GitHub doesn't let us. I've heard this concern a couple of times now so I'll have another look. I can hopefully at least improve how it's presented and communicated so it's more reassuring! [1] https://repography.com/faq https://repography.com/faq
- red2awn 5y ago
  The back button is broken on your website.

alfredbez 5y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371029 (from 2016)

mrdoe 5y ago

Where are the cool free projects? This repography is yet another product that wants my money.

sulam 5y ago
Their developers decided donating their time to a bunch of demanding know-it-alls with no appreciation for their work was a bad deal for them.
samhw 5y ago
Yes, this is actually not unusual. People need food, water, shelter, and suchlike in order to survive, and so they exchange their labour for goods and services. Money is a helpful token now rather widely used in this bartering process. I know it's quite common in the web development community to take a lot of freely provided code which took immense labour to write, and then stitch it together, in a way that requires very little skill or effort, in order to sell the result - but this isn't the norm in the world at large.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

NFT sale when?

TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago

This seems to be a joke, but I was expecting it might be serious, because (AIUI) the Go compiler is derived from the Plan 9 C compiler. Of course, that was probably not started in 1972, but it does mean Go's source code is older than the language itself.

hobomatic 5y ago
One of the more strikingly recognizable steps along the way is the alef programming language, also a plan9/bell labs baby.

kleton 5y ago

Presumably the original first commit was a CL on perforce, and copybara did not yet exist, so they arbitrarily did this when exporting to git.

ksherlock 5y ago

There seems to be a lot of confusion. Check out the GIT_AUTHOR_DATE (or git commit --date) and GIT_COMMITTER_DATE environment variables for more insight.

roboyoshi 5y ago

Russ cox wrote about it too: https://research.swtch.com/govcs https://research.swtch.com/govcs