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I think it's easy to over-estimate the success and ubiquity of GitHub if you spend all day on HN. The real money-make for SCM is still Perforce, according to sc

I think it's easy to over-estimate the success and ubiquity of GitHub if you spend all day on HN. The real money-make for SCM is still Perforce, according to schacon at a somewhat recent drink-up in Boston. These questions about GitHub vs. Pinterest are revealing in that I think many folk on HN don't realize what a relatively small community of developers this is. Relative to the tens of millions of folk on Pinerest. Heck, GitHub's front page reveals they have only 1.6 million users. I wonder if their growth curve has started to flatten out. I hope they have a great plan/vision for what to do with the money, because running GitHub ad infinitum as an immensely successful small software company would seem to be a dream to me.

to3m 14y ago
Well, I'm not surprised Perforce wins the money-making contest... it IS quite expensive, particularly compared to git. Nevertheless, I'm inclined to agree about the apparent popularity of git vs its actual popularity. I don't think I've ever met anybody who's used git professionally, and in fact I don't even know that many people who've actually used git at all. Everybody I meet (though I haven't met absolutely everybody!) uses perforce if they can afford it, and SVN if they can't. SVN supports binary files tolerably well, and perforce supports them fine. perforce keeps working fine even when your depot's head revision (if that's the right term) gets to 300GB. Well... SVN probably doesn't do that. But it's still cheap.
- cracell 14y ago
  As a Ruby/JavaScript developer I find it very bizarre that you don't know anyone that has used git professionally. Pretty much everyone I know uses it professionally and I'm a bit taken aback when someone hasn't even tried it.
  - hemancuso 14y ago
    This is my point, exactly. Just because practically everyone on HN is a Ruby/JS/Python dev doesn't mean the world at large reflects that breakdown. I am a bit taken aback that you can't imagine a C# or Java dev who has never had to touch git.
    - obtu 14y ago
      I've met someone who worked at two large and conservative workplaces where his mission has been to set up an internal Git service (a slow task thanks to an archaic IT) so they can move some of their projects to that. According to him, institutionally this company prefers dealing with large vendors with big support contracts, but there's strong demand for Git coming from developers and contractors. The enterprise world isn't completely segregated, and developers would be coming in contact with Git easily enough, for example through the breadth and depth of GitHub projects.
  - to3m 14y ago
    Until I got sucked in to the whole iPhone "thing", which is how I met git, I generally worked in C++, on Windows, writing video games for consoles. (Am I allowed to raise an eyebrow when I hear of people who don't know a single assembly language?) This sector just doesn't really seem to attract command line fiends, at least not where I worked, and combined with the whole Windows "thing", that's naturally going to tamp down on people's potential enthusiasm for git. But people in games probably wouldn't use git anyway on account of its poor handling of binary files, and limited scalability in the face of gigabytes of stuff. (I have a suspicion it might be a bit difficult to explain to many/most artists anyway. And a fair proportion of programmers too...) Of course, this shows nothing more than that we both live in our respective little bubbles ;) But my impression, as a bit of an outsider, is that the HN hivemind is made up of the same people that frequent GitHub. That is, mainly (but of course, not exclusively) people who work with web-python-ruby-javascript-etc. - thus naturally magnifying the apparent importance of GitHub. But I suspect the HN population is not representative, and therefore GitHub's popularity amongst the HN readership probably does not extend to the programming population at large. And this is certainly backed up by my experience. (All standard disclaimers apply.)

to3m 14y ago

Well, I'm not surprised Perforce wins the money-making contest... it IS quite expensive, particularly compared to git. Nevertheless, I'm inclined to agree about the apparent popularity of git vs its actual popularity. I don't think I've ever met anybody who's used git professionally, and in fact I don't even know that many people who've actually used git at all. Everybody I meet (though I haven't met absolutely everybody!) uses perforce if they can afford it, and SVN if they can't. SVN supports binary files tolerably well, and perforce supports them fine. perforce keeps working fine even when your depot's head revision (if that's the right term) gets to 300GB. Well... SVN probably doesn't do that. But it's still cheap.

cracell 14y ago
As a Ruby/JavaScript developer I find it very bizarre that you don't know anyone that has used git professionally. Pretty much everyone I know uses it professionally and I'm a bit taken aback when someone hasn't even tried it.
- hemancuso 14y ago
  This is my point, exactly. Just because practically everyone on HN is a Ruby/JS/Python dev doesn't mean the world at large reflects that breakdown. I am a bit taken aback that you can't imagine a C# or Java dev who has never had to touch git.
  - obtu 14y ago
    I've met someone who worked at two large and conservative workplaces where his mission has been to set up an internal Git service (a slow task thanks to an archaic IT) so they can move some of their projects to that. According to him, institutionally this company prefers dealing with large vendors with big support contracts, but there's strong demand for Git coming from developers and contractors. The enterprise world isn't completely segregated, and developers would be coming in contact with Git easily enough, for example through the breadth and depth of GitHub projects.
- to3m 14y ago
  Until I got sucked in to the whole iPhone "thing", which is how I met git, I generally worked in C++, on Windows, writing video games for consoles. (Am I allowed to raise an eyebrow when I hear of people who don't know a single assembly language?) This sector just doesn't really seem to attract command line fiends, at least not where I worked, and combined with the whole Windows "thing", that's naturally going to tamp down on people's potential enthusiasm for git. But people in games probably wouldn't use git anyway on account of its poor handling of binary files, and limited scalability in the face of gigabytes of stuff. (I have a suspicion it might be a bit difficult to explain to many/most artists anyway. And a fair proportion of programmers too...) Of course, this shows nothing more than that we both live in our respective little bubbles ;) But my impression, as a bit of an outsider, is that the HN hivemind is made up of the same people that frequent GitHub. That is, mainly (but of course, not exclusively) people who work with web-python-ruby-javascript-etc. - thus naturally magnifying the apparent importance of GitHub. But I suspect the HN population is not representative, and therefore GitHub's popularity amongst the HN readership probably does not extend to the programming population at large. And this is certainly backed up by my experience. (All standard disclaimers apply.)