4 ms·

… turned into? GitHub’s motto VERY EARLY ON was “social coding”. They kept that motto for a long time.

jiayo 4y ago
Yes, one of the earliest archive.org snapshots from 14 years ago shows this: https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001759/http://github.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001759/http://github.com...
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  Love that self-presentation from 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080905195808/http://logicalawesome.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080905195808/http://logicalawe...
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Yes. And it did that perfectly well five years ago before they bolted on all this bloat nonsense.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Yep, many people forget GitHub was trying to be Facebook but for coders from the very start. Back in late 2000s when FB was the hottest startup everyone was trying to do "the Facebook of X" knockoffs.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  Now we need a Facebook for sharing photos, videos, events and posts with our friends and adjacent social circles.
  - genewitch 4y ago
    Fediverse on a curated homeserver is getting there. Or having importable killfiles
  - d0mine 4y ago
    - photos :: instagram - videos :: tiktok, youtube - posts :: HN, reddit, dev.to, substack, mailing lists (yes, people still use those) - events :: messengers (telegram, whatsapp, etc), email.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      Missing from all these is a social network of "our friends and adjacent social circles". And perhaps, on top of it, a service aggregating output of all the ones you listed, so as a user, I can have (for a lack of better term) "people-first" mode of interaction. By this I mean, I want it to answer the question, "what have X been up to recently?", where X is a scope I can alter - from "all my friends" to "a particular group" to "particular friend". I.e. what Facebook used to be, before the "great social network unbundling".
      - qbasic_forever 4y ago
        That was what Google plus wanted to be lol
Supermancho 4y ago
This paper is about how gamification affects behavior, not about it being some sort of social platform. Every platform was "social X" around the time github started up. Lots of sites have social elements and it never amounted to them being called social X either. Sure you can use those features in some sort of gamesmanship, but generally it's not used that way and so few people care that it's laughable. > "social coding" Social coding is not Github's primary function and it's hasn't been promoted in earnest, this way because it's secondary at best. Ostensibly, it's hosted git. That's the naming, the function, and most developers think of it as such. The vast majority of users are either corporate developers who work for some company and can't care less about the "social" aspects of it or insular developers with projects that never see the light of day. Notably, this paper only sourced public repositories, where many people use it as an element of their work portfolio. This doesn't speak to "all of github".
- lupire 4y ago
  It's GitHub, not GitHost. hub /həb/ noun 1. the central part of a wheel, rotating on or with the axle, and from which the spokes radiate. 2. the effective center of an activity, region, or network. "the city has always been the financial hub of the country"
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Maybe it should become GitHost then. The only thing I want from GitHub is a pretty web page where I can browse git repositories.
    - scrollaway 4y ago
      So a website used by millions should become what you want it to become, not what others use it for?
      - matheusmoreira 4y ago
        If this thread is any indication, yes. GitHub only gets ever more toxic with this gamified social media stuff.

Yes, one of the earliest archive.org snapshots from 14 years ago shows this: https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001759/http://github.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001759/http://github.com...

fxtentacle 4y ago
Love that self-presentation from 2008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080905195808/http://logicalawesome.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080905195808/http://logicalawe...

c7DJTLrn 4y ago

Yes. And it did that perfectly well five years ago before they bolted on all this bloat nonsense.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Yep, many people forget GitHub was trying to be Facebook but for coders from the very start. Back in late 2000s when FB was the hottest startup everyone was trying to do "the Facebook of X" knockoffs.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Now we need a Facebook for sharing photos, videos, events and posts with our friends and adjacent social circles.
- genewitch 4y ago
  Fediverse on a curated homeserver is getting there. Or having importable killfiles
- d0mine 4y ago
  - photos :: instagram - videos :: tiktok, youtube - posts :: HN, reddit, dev.to, substack, mailing lists (yes, people still use those) - events :: messengers (telegram, whatsapp, etc), email.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Missing from all these is a social network of "our friends and adjacent social circles". And perhaps, on top of it, a service aggregating output of all the ones you listed, so as a user, I can have (for a lack of better term) "people-first" mode of interaction. By this I mean, I want it to answer the question, "what have X been up to recently?", where X is a scope I can alter - from "all my friends" to "a particular group" to "particular friend". I.e. what Facebook used to be, before the "great social network unbundling".
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      That was what Google plus wanted to be lol

Supermancho 4y ago

This paper is about how gamification affects behavior, not about it being some sort of social platform. Every platform was "social X" around the time github started up. Lots of sites have social elements and it never amounted to them being called social X either. Sure you can use those features in some sort of gamesmanship, but generally it's not used that way and so few people care that it's laughable. > "social coding" Social coding is not Github's primary function and it's hasn't been promoted in earnest, this way because it's secondary at best. Ostensibly, it's hosted git. That's the naming, the function, and most developers think of it as such. The vast majority of users are either corporate developers who work for some company and can't care less about the "social" aspects of it or insular developers with projects that never see the light of day. Notably, this paper only sourced public repositories, where many people use it as an element of their work portfolio. This doesn't speak to "all of github".

lupire 4y ago
It's GitHub, not GitHost. hub /həb/ noun 1. the central part of a wheel, rotating on or with the axle, and from which the spokes radiate. 2. the effective center of an activity, region, or network. "the city has always been the financial hub of the country"
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Maybe it should become GitHost then. The only thing I want from GitHub is a pretty web page where I can browse git repositories.
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    So a website used by millions should become what you want it to become, not what others use it for?
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      If this thread is any indication, yes. GitHub only gets ever more toxic with this gamified social media stuff.