5 ms·

Oh my god: > GitHub.com is best thought of as Facebook for geeks Really?

by 4ad 15y ago

igorgue 15y ago
I spend a lot of time on Github and it's very fun, I think that's what Facebook is for non-hackers.
dchest 15y ago
Yes. Including countless memes in comments and pull requests.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  Unfortunately, the most infamous example of that (Bumblebee's 'rm -rf /usr/' mistake) seems to have been removed: > https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdb...
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    Fortunately... I wrote a comment under it, and since that day my mailbox was flooded with notifications about other replies for months to come. I think about doing some analytics on them; say, plot the number of comments per day over time - I'd expect to see something like e^(1/x) - 1.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      You should do that - though I doubt it'd be an exponential decay. You're going to get a series of bumps every time a post about it pops up on HN (or similar site), and those bumps will probably be positively correlated with one another (note how top posts on HN are oftentimes top posts on related subreddits on Reddit, for example). Would be interesting to see, though - let me know if you do it.
  - bonobo 15y ago
    Actually it's still there: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commi... MrMEEE changed the repo's name.
  - mitchty 15y ago
    I thought of this pull request thread first actually: https://github.com/drbrain/meme/pull/13 https://github.com/drbrain/meme/pull/13 Must've missed that one somehow when it was popular.
beaumartinez 15y ago
What better way to describe to a less tech-savvy audience? It's "social coding" after all.
batista 15y ago
Yeah. Sounds particularly apt.
- rue 15y ago
  I think it's almost exactly the wrong impression to give. Most people associate Facebook with hanging out with friends and general screwing around, and while there are is a certain amount of that, it happens distinctly in the context of doing work (used loosely), which is the main use case. I guess you could try the angle of “imagine if you were able to do your job on Facebook with all your co-workers, but all the documents would also be visible to anyone else on Facebook so they could, if they chose, become your co-workers too”.
  - batista 15y ago
    Most people associate Facebook with hanging out with friends and general screwing around, and while there are is a certain amount of that, it happens distinctly in the context of doing work (used loosely), which is the main use case. Yes, but for geeks, and especially geeks using GitHub, programming work is the equivalent of Facebook "fun".
    - bh42222 15y ago
      But for everyone one else Facebook "fun" is a waste of time. So now everyone who is NOT a geek and reads that article thinks github is where geeks go to waste time and be unproductive. OK, better add this github to the corporate black list!
      - batista 15y ago
        So now everyone who is NOT a geek and reads that article thinks github is where geeks go to waste time and be unproductive. Well, considering that 90% on GitHub is crap (Sturgeon's law), they might be right. While there are of course productive repos in it, also consider all the hobbyist repos, me-too repos, NIH repos, useless fork/pull repos, half-baked repos, circle-jerk fad concept/language of the month repos, etc. Those are quite analogous to Facebook, no?

Oh my god: > GitHub.com is best thought of as Facebook for geeks Really?

by 4ad 15y ago

Oh my god: > GitHub.com is best thought of as Facebook for geeks Really?

igorgue 15y ago

I spend a lot of time on Github and it's very fun, I think that's what Facebook is for non-hackers.

dchest 15y ago

Yes. Including countless memes in comments and pull requests.

chimeracoder 15y ago
Unfortunately, the most infamous example of that (Bumblebee's 'rm -rf /usr/' mistake) seems to have been removed: > https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee/commit/a047be85247755cdb...
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  Fortunately... I wrote a comment under it, and since that day my mailbox was flooded with notifications about other replies for months to come. I think about doing some analytics on them; say, plot the number of comments per day over time - I'd expect to see something like e^(1/x) - 1.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    You should do that - though I doubt it'd be an exponential decay. You're going to get a series of bumps every time a post about it pops up on HN (or similar site), and those bumps will probably be positively correlated with one another (note how top posts on HN are oftentimes top posts on related subreddits on Reddit, for example). Would be interesting to see, though - let me know if you do it.
- bonobo 15y ago
  Actually it's still there: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commi... MrMEEE changed the repo's name.
- mitchty 15y ago
  I thought of this pull request thread first actually: https://github.com/drbrain/meme/pull/13 https://github.com/drbrain/meme/pull/13 Must've missed that one somehow when it was popular.

beaumartinez 15y ago

What better way to describe to a less tech-savvy audience? It's "social coding" after all.

batista 15y ago

Yeah. Sounds particularly apt.

rue 15y ago
I think it's almost exactly the wrong impression to give. Most people associate Facebook with hanging out with friends and general screwing around, and while there are is a certain amount of that, it happens distinctly in the context of doing work (used loosely), which is the main use case. I guess you could try the angle of “imagine if you were able to do your job on Facebook with all your co-workers, but all the documents would also be visible to anyone else on Facebook so they could, if they chose, become your co-workers too”.
- batista 15y ago
  Most people associate Facebook with hanging out with friends and general screwing around, and while there are is a certain amount of that, it happens distinctly in the context of doing work (used loosely), which is the main use case. Yes, but for geeks, and especially geeks using GitHub, programming work is the equivalent of Facebook "fun".
  - bh42222 15y ago
    But for everyone one else Facebook "fun" is a waste of time. So now everyone who is NOT a geek and reads that article thinks github is where geeks go to waste time and be unproductive. OK, better add this github to the corporate black list!
    - batista 15y ago
      So now everyone who is NOT a geek and reads that article thinks github is where geeks go to waste time and be unproductive. Well, considering that 90% on GitHub is crap (Sturgeon's law), they might be right. While there are of course productive repos in it, also consider all the hobbyist repos, me-too repos, NIH repos, useless fork/pull repos, half-baked repos, circle-jerk fad concept/language of the month repos, etc. Those are quite analogous to Facebook, no?