4 ms·

Maybe I wasn't paying attention as much but I never remember Github having this high a frequency of outages before Microsoft bought them.

anuraaga 3y ago
Am I the only one that remembers frequent outages before the acquisition? I didn't keep track in a spreadsheet or anything so don't have any data to back it up though but always assumed it's similar to Twitter of the day, hard to make a stable service in Rails. If anyone can actually put out the data that would be great. I suspect there was a period post acquisition of relative stability that dulls our memory of frequently broken PRs which we probably just got used to at the time.
selykg 3y ago
Before Microsoft bought them they were basically at a standstill and no new features were being added to the product. At least, that's my recollection of it, perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  The big one-step-forward-five-steps-back UI redesign was before the acquisition, wasn’t it?
- ljm 3y ago
  Only now is GH redesigning the UI to be fluid-width everywhere. And GitHub actions were basically sharing the infra of Azure Pipelines.
- aicez 3y ago
  Agreed. I vaguely recall that there were no new features for more than a year.
- midasuni 3y ago
  My screwdriver doesn’t seem to need more features. It’s nice stable and reliable.
  - jkrubin 3y ago
    Please create a PAT to enable your screwdriver.
  - johnfn 3y ago
    Before the MS acquisition, Github didn't even have emoji reactions on comments in issue threads, so people just spammed +1s if they had the same issue. It was terrible. (You can still see evidence of this on older repos.) They also didn't have like 5 billion other features that we now take for granted. EDIT: Sorry, this is incorrect. GH did ship them prior to the MS acquisition. I do however remember them taking an EXTREMELY long time to ship emoji reactions, which struck me as a fairly trivial feature. I stand by the point that GH ships features faster post-acquisition, though.
    - mdekkers 3y ago
      > Before the MS acquisition, Github didn't even have emoji reactions. I have never, ever in my professional life thought “I need an emoji for this”
    - Springtime 3y ago
      They had reactions two years prior as confirmed by their blog post[1] about it. [1] https://github.blog/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/ https://github.blog/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-request...
      - johnfn 3y ago
        Dang, you're right. Sorry about that. I remembered that reactions irked me for some reason, but I had incorrectly tied it to the MS acquisition. The real issue was this: it took Github an extremely long amount of time to add a feature as simple as reactions. Github was founded in '08, and didn't add reactions for another eight years! But I distinctly remember once MS acquired them, they started shipping features left and right, and features much larger than simple emoji reactions.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
tester756 3y ago
Microsoft brought to them shitton of new users like big enterprises which implies a lot of more challenges
- bitvoid 3y ago
  I'm sure making private repos free also dramatically increased the number of total repos to manage. I know personally that I went from having a couple of public repos to at least a dozen private repos for notes, configs, etc.

anuraaga 3y ago

Am I the only one that remembers frequent outages before the acquisition? I didn't keep track in a spreadsheet or anything so don't have any data to back it up though but always assumed it's similar to Twitter of the day, hard to make a stable service in Rails. If anyone can actually put out the data that would be great. I suspect there was a period post acquisition of relative stability that dulls our memory of frequently broken PRs which we probably just got used to at the time.

selykg 3y ago

Before Microsoft bought them they were basically at a standstill and no new features were being added to the product. At least, that's my recollection of it, perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

hotnfresh 3y ago
The big one-step-forward-five-steps-back UI redesign was before the acquisition, wasn’t it?
ljm 3y ago
Only now is GH redesigning the UI to be fluid-width everywhere. And GitHub actions were basically sharing the infra of Azure Pipelines.
aicez 3y ago
Agreed. I vaguely recall that there were no new features for more than a year.
midasuni 3y ago
My screwdriver doesn’t seem to need more features. It’s nice stable and reliable.
- jkrubin 3y ago
  Please create a PAT to enable your screwdriver.
- johnfn 3y ago
  Before the MS acquisition, Github didn't even have emoji reactions on comments in issue threads, so people just spammed +1s if they had the same issue. It was terrible. (You can still see evidence of this on older repos.) They also didn't have like 5 billion other features that we now take for granted. EDIT: Sorry, this is incorrect. GH did ship them prior to the MS acquisition. I do however remember them taking an EXTREMELY long time to ship emoji reactions, which struck me as a fairly trivial feature. I stand by the point that GH ships features faster post-acquisition, though.
  - mdekkers 3y ago
    > Before the MS acquisition, Github didn't even have emoji reactions. I have never, ever in my professional life thought “I need an emoji for this”
  - Springtime 3y ago
    They had reactions two years prior as confirmed by their blog post[1] about it. [1] https://github.blog/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-requests-issues-and-comments/ https://github.blog/2016-03-10-add-reactions-to-pull-request...
    - johnfn 3y ago
      Dang, you're right. Sorry about that. I remembered that reactions irked me for some reason, but I had incorrectly tied it to the MS acquisition. The real issue was this: it took Github an extremely long amount of time to add a feature as simple as reactions. Github was founded in '08, and didn't add reactions for another eight years! But I distinctly remember once MS acquired them, they started shipping features left and right, and features much larger than simple emoji reactions.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago

tester756 3y ago

Microsoft brought to them shitton of new users like big enterprises which implies a lot of more challenges

bitvoid 3y ago
I'm sure making private repos free also dramatically increased the number of total repos to manage. I know personally that I went from having a couple of public repos to at least a dozen private repos for notes, configs, etc.