6 ms·

I second this. GitHub used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. Even basic functionality like the timeline updating when I push commits is unrel

I second this. GitHub used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. Even basic functionality like the timeline updating when I push commits is unreliable. The other day I opened a PR diff (not even a particularly large one) and it took fully 15 seconds after the page visually finished loading -- on a $2,000 dev machine -- before any UI elements became clickable. This happened repeatedly. It is fairly stunning to me that we've come to accept this level of non-functional software as normal.

kimixa 8mo ago
We loved Github as a product when it needed to return or profit beyond "getting more users". I feel this is just the natural trajectory for any VC-funded "service" that isn't actually profitable at the time you adopt it. Of course it's going to change for the worse to become profitable.
- tibbar 8mo ago
  GitHub isn't VC funded at the moment, though. It's owned by Microsoft. Not that this necessarily changes your point.
  - danudey 8mo ago
    > Of course it's going to change for the worse > It's owned by Microsoft. I see no contradictions here.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  I don’t get it. Why making the UI shittier would possibly lead to more profit?
  - kimixa 8mo ago
    It seems most of the complaints are about the reliability and infrastructure - which is very much often a direct result of lack of investment and development resources. And then many UI changes people have been complaining about are related to things like copilot being forcibly integrated - which is very much in the "Microsoft expect to gain a profit by encouraging it's use" camp. It's pretty rare companies make a UI because they want a bad UI, it's normally a second order thing from other priorities - such as promoting other services or encouraging more ad impressions or similar.
  - danudey 8mo ago
    Moving to client-side rendering via React means less server load spent generating boilerplate HTML over and over again. If you have a captive audience, you can get away with making the product shittier because it's so difficult for anyone to move away from it - both from an engineering standpoint and from network effects.
HoldOnAMinute 8mo ago
The trend of "non-functional software" is happening everywhere. See the recent articles about Copilot in Notepad, failing to start because you aren't signed in with your Microsoft Account. We are in a future that nobody wanted.
- dylan604 8mo ago
  > We are in a future that nobody wanted. Nor deserved.
  - heliumtera 8mo ago
    Then why is it the future we have?
    - its_magic 8mo ago
      It was a complete accident. Nobody could have foreseen it. We are currently experiencing the sudden discovery that Microsoft is an evil corporation and maybe putting everything in the cloud wasn't the best move after all.
      - zx8080 8mo ago
        > Sudden discovery Sudden for 15-years old's only.
      - johnisgood 8mo ago
        Some people, sure. I never thought that putting everything in the cloud is the best move, but I guess N=1. In fact I was shocked to see that so many allegedly tech-literate people were so blindly pro-cloud (and they still are).
    - timacles 8mo ago
      Let’s just say there are a couple of guys, who are up to no good. And they started making trouble in our neighborhood. jokes aside it’s all because of hyper financial engineering. Every dollar every little cent must be maximized. Every process must be exploited and monetized, and there are a small group of people who are essentially driving all this all across the world in every industry.
sodapopcan 8mo ago
Ya, it really was one of the most enjoyable web apps to use pre-MS. I'm sure there are lots of things that have contributed to this downfall. We certainly didn't need bullshit features like achievements.
- noodlesUK 8mo ago
  Even just a year or two ago its web interface was way snappier. Now an issue with a non-trivial number of comments, or a PR with a diff of even just a few hundred or thousand lines of changes causes my browser to lock up.
  - sodapopcan 8mo ago
    But even clicking around tabs and whatnot is noticeably slower. It used to be incredibly snappy.
  - bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
    Which website lets you load PRs with 1000 lines and it’s fast? Honest question, it’s not gitlab.
    - deathanatos 8mo ago
      It's ~80 KiB. Do you think 80 KiB should be slow? GH just a few days ago told me that it couldn't fetch the files changed because there were too many files changed. There were 4.
      - bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
        You didn’t answer the question
    - DANmode 8mo ago
      I’ve really enjoyed Gitea wherever I’ve used it.
    - pirates 8mo ago
samgranieri 8mo ago
I've been a GitHub user since the very early days. I had a beta invite to the service. I really wish they didn't swap out the FE for a React FE. They need to start rolling back some of their most recent changes. I mean, if they want people to start moving to self hosted GitLab, this is gonna get that ball rolling.
- throw20251220 8mo ago
  GitLab is slower for me than that React GH app. Why would I move to GitLab?
  - tarellel 8mo ago
    Was this a local/on prem version of GL or the hosted web version? My previous org had an on prem version hosted on a local VM. It was extremely fast, we setup another VM for the runners, and one for storing all the docker containers. The thing I’ve seen people do it use the VM they put their gitlab instance on for everything and ends up bogging things down quite a bit.
dev_l1x_be 8mo ago
So React rewrite did not help after all? Imagine, one of the largest software tool companies on Earth cannot reliably REbuild something in React. I lost count of the inconsistency issues React introduced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33576722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33576722
- catigula 8mo ago
  React isn't causing these issues.
  - dev_l1x_be 8mo ago
    Good to know. So it only causes the UI inconsistency bugs.
    - danudey 8mo ago
      The new design/architecture allows them to do great stuff in the name of efficiency; for example, when browsing through some parts of the UI, it's now much more capable of just updating the part of the page that's changed, rather than having to reload the entire thing. This is a significantly better approach for a lot of things. I understand that the 'updating the part of the page that's changed' functionality is now dramatically slower, more unresponsive, and less reliable than the 'reload the entire thing' approach was, and it feels like browsing the site via Citrix over dial-up half the time, but look, sacrifices have to be made in the name of making things better even if the sacrifice is that things get worse instead.
      - hunterpayne 8mo ago
        > for example, when browsing through some parts of the UI React allows this? I didn't realize that I needed React to do this when we used Java and Js to do this 20 years ago. I also didn't realize I needed React to do this when we used Scala and generated Js to do this 10 years ago. JFC, the world didn't start when you turned 18.
blibble 8mo ago
> GitHub used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. it's almost as if Microsoft bought it, isn't it?
matthewisabel 8mo ago
Hey from the GitHub team. Outages like this are incredibly painful and we'll share a post-mortem once our investigation is complete. It stings to have this happen as we're putting a lot of effort specifically into the core product, growing teams like Actions and increasing performance-focused initiatives on key areas like pull requests where we're already making solid progress[1]. Would love if you would reach out to me in DM around the perf issues you mentioned with diffs. There's a lot of architecture, scaling, and performance work that we're prioritizing as we work to meet the growing code demand. We're still investigating today's outage and we'll share a write up on our status page, and in our February Availability Report, with details on root cause and steps we're taking to mitigate moving forward. [1] https://x.com/matthewisabel/status/2019811220598280410 https://x.com/matthewisabel/status/2019811220598280410
- Etheryte 8mo ago
  Literally everyone who has used Github to look at a pull request in say the last year has experienced the ridiculous performance issues. It's a constant laughing point on HN at this point. There is no way you don't know this. Inviting to take this to a private channel, along with the rest of your comment really, is simply standard corporate PR.
  - matthewisabel 8mo ago
    Yes agreed it's been a huge problem, and we shipped changes last week to address some of the gnarly p99 interactions. It doesn't fix everything and large PRs have a lot of room to be faster. It's still good to know where some worst performance issues are to see if there's anything particularly problematic or if a future change will help.
    - ibrahima 8mo ago
      FWIW, I find the new React-based diff viewer worse than the old server-rendered page. I disabled the preview for this reason. It does have some nice features but overall it feels more finicky. I would think that in theory this should be better at handling large diffs but I'm not sure that that's the case, and at least the UX feels more choppy.
oldestofsports 8mo ago
This is just microsoft doing the only thing they know, which is taking a good product and turning it into a monster by bashing out whatever feature is on some investors mind that barely even work in a isolated vacuum-sealed test chamber. All microsoft producs are like bad experiments.
danny_codes 8mo ago
I mean.. it’s a Microsoft product now. That’s basically a guarantee it will suck, and continue to get worse and worse until it’s an unusable mess of garbage like everything else they make. I haven’t seen any good user-facing windows products in at least 10 years and somehow the bar drops lower by the year.
htx80nerd 8mo ago
>"XYZ used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. Even basic functionality..." The new normal is too many cases. Then people act put off you complain, or act like you are expecting too much. Lots of people are in software development, or management, who dont have the mindset and personality for it. These roles are not for everyone. But people like the $$$ and so the wrong people get involved.

kimixa 8mo ago

We loved Github as a product when it needed to return or profit beyond "getting more users". I feel this is just the natural trajectory for any VC-funded "service" that isn't actually profitable at the time you adopt it. Of course it's going to change for the worse to become profitable.

tibbar 8mo ago
GitHub isn't VC funded at the moment, though. It's owned by Microsoft. Not that this necessarily changes your point.
- danudey 8mo ago
  > Of course it's going to change for the worse > It's owned by Microsoft. I see no contradictions here.
notpushkin 8mo ago
I don’t get it. Why making the UI shittier would possibly lead to more profit?
- kimixa 8mo ago
  It seems most of the complaints are about the reliability and infrastructure - which is very much often a direct result of lack of investment and development resources. And then many UI changes people have been complaining about are related to things like copilot being forcibly integrated - which is very much in the "Microsoft expect to gain a profit by encouraging it's use" camp. It's pretty rare companies make a UI because they want a bad UI, it's normally a second order thing from other priorities - such as promoting other services or encouraging more ad impressions or similar.
- danudey 8mo ago
  Moving to client-side rendering via React means less server load spent generating boilerplate HTML over and over again. If you have a captive audience, you can get away with making the product shittier because it's so difficult for anyone to move away from it - both from an engineering standpoint and from network effects.

HoldOnAMinute 8mo ago

The trend of "non-functional software" is happening everywhere. See the recent articles about Copilot in Notepad, failing to start because you aren't signed in with your Microsoft Account. We are in a future that nobody wanted.

dylan604 8mo ago
> We are in a future that nobody wanted. Nor deserved.
- heliumtera 8mo ago
  Then why is it the future we have?
  - its_magic 8mo ago
    It was a complete accident. Nobody could have foreseen it. We are currently experiencing the sudden discovery that Microsoft is an evil corporation and maybe putting everything in the cloud wasn't the best move after all.
    - zx8080 8mo ago
      > Sudden discovery Sudden for 15-years old's only.
    - johnisgood 8mo ago
      Some people, sure. I never thought that putting everything in the cloud is the best move, but I guess N=1. In fact I was shocked to see that so many allegedly tech-literate people were so blindly pro-cloud (and they still are).
  - timacles 8mo ago
    Let’s just say there are a couple of guys, who are up to no good. And they started making trouble in our neighborhood. jokes aside it’s all because of hyper financial engineering. Every dollar every little cent must be maximized. Every process must be exploited and monetized, and there are a small group of people who are essentially driving all this all across the world in every industry.

sodapopcan 8mo ago

Ya, it really was one of the most enjoyable web apps to use pre-MS. I'm sure there are lots of things that have contributed to this downfall. We certainly didn't need bullshit features like achievements.

noodlesUK 8mo ago
Even just a year or two ago its web interface was way snappier. Now an issue with a non-trivial number of comments, or a PR with a diff of even just a few hundred or thousand lines of changes causes my browser to lock up.
- sodapopcan 8mo ago
  But even clicking around tabs and whatnot is noticeably slower. It used to be incredibly snappy.
- bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
  Which website lets you load PRs with 1000 lines and it’s fast? Honest question, it’s not gitlab.
  - deathanatos 8mo ago
    It's ~80 KiB. Do you think 80 KiB should be slow? GH just a few days ago told me that it couldn't fetch the files changed because there were too many files changed. There were 4.
    - bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
      You didn’t answer the question
  - DANmode 8mo ago
    I’ve really enjoyed Gitea wherever I’ve used it.
  - pirates 8mo ago

samgranieri 8mo ago

I've been a GitHub user since the very early days. I had a beta invite to the service. I really wish they didn't swap out the FE for a React FE. They need to start rolling back some of their most recent changes. I mean, if they want people to start moving to self hosted GitLab, this is gonna get that ball rolling.

throw20251220 8mo ago
GitLab is slower for me than that React GH app. Why would I move to GitLab?
- tarellel 8mo ago
  Was this a local/on prem version of GL or the hosted web version? My previous org had an on prem version hosted on a local VM. It was extremely fast, we setup another VM for the runners, and one for storing all the docker containers. The thing I’ve seen people do it use the VM they put their gitlab instance on for everything and ends up bogging things down quite a bit.

dev_l1x_be 8mo ago

So React rewrite did not help after all? Imagine, one of the largest software tool companies on Earth cannot reliably REbuild something in React. I lost count of the inconsistency issues React introduced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33576722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33576722

catigula 8mo ago
React isn't causing these issues.
- dev_l1x_be 8mo ago
  Good to know. So it only causes the UI inconsistency bugs.
  - danudey 8mo ago
    The new design/architecture allows them to do great stuff in the name of efficiency; for example, when browsing through some parts of the UI, it's now much more capable of just updating the part of the page that's changed, rather than having to reload the entire thing. This is a significantly better approach for a lot of things. I understand that the 'updating the part of the page that's changed' functionality is now dramatically slower, more unresponsive, and less reliable than the 'reload the entire thing' approach was, and it feels like browsing the site via Citrix over dial-up half the time, but look, sacrifices have to be made in the name of making things better even if the sacrifice is that things get worse instead.
    - hunterpayne 8mo ago
      > for example, when browsing through some parts of the UI React allows this? I didn't realize that I needed React to do this when we used Java and Js to do this 20 years ago. I also didn't realize I needed React to do this when we used Scala and generated Js to do this 10 years ago. JFC, the world didn't start when you turned 18.

blibble 8mo ago

> GitHub used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. it's almost as if Microsoft bought it, isn't it?

matthewisabel 8mo ago

Hey from the GitHub team. Outages like this are incredibly painful and we'll share a post-mortem once our investigation is complete. It stings to have this happen as we're putting a lot of effort specifically into the core product, growing teams like Actions and increasing performance-focused initiatives on key areas like pull requests where we're already making solid progress[1]. Would love if you would reach out to me in DM around the perf issues you mentioned with diffs. There's a lot of architecture, scaling, and performance work that we're prioritizing as we work to meet the growing code demand. We're still investigating today's outage and we'll share a write up on our status page, and in our February Availability Report, with details on root cause and steps we're taking to mitigate moving forward. [1] https://x.com/matthewisabel/status/2019811220598280410 https://x.com/matthewisabel/status/2019811220598280410

Etheryte 8mo ago
Literally everyone who has used Github to look at a pull request in say the last year has experienced the ridiculous performance issues. It's a constant laughing point on HN at this point. There is no way you don't know this. Inviting to take this to a private channel, along with the rest of your comment really, is simply standard corporate PR.
- matthewisabel 8mo ago
  Yes agreed it's been a huge problem, and we shipped changes last week to address some of the gnarly p99 interactions. It doesn't fix everything and large PRs have a lot of room to be faster. It's still good to know where some worst performance issues are to see if there's anything particularly problematic or if a future change will help.
  - ibrahima 8mo ago
    FWIW, I find the new React-based diff viewer worse than the old server-rendered page. I disabled the preview for this reason. It does have some nice features but overall it feels more finicky. I would think that in theory this should be better at handling large diffs but I'm not sure that that's the case, and at least the UX feels more choppy.

oldestofsports 8mo ago

This is just microsoft doing the only thing they know, which is taking a good product and turning it into a monster by bashing out whatever feature is on some investors mind that barely even work in a isolated vacuum-sealed test chamber. All microsoft producs are like bad experiments.

danny_codes 8mo ago

I mean.. it’s a Microsoft product now. That’s basically a guarantee it will suck, and continue to get worse and worse until it’s an unusable mess of garbage like everything else they make. I haven’t seen any good user-facing windows products in at least 10 years and somehow the bar drops lower by the year.

htx80nerd 8mo ago

>"XYZ used to be a fantastic product. Now it barely even works. Even basic functionality..." The new normal is too many cases. Then people act put off you complain, or act like you are expecting too much. Lots of people are in software development, or management, who dont have the mindset and personality for it. These roles are not for everyone. But people like the $$$ and so the wrong people get involved.