4 ms·

Pullup, the site you join via pull request

102 points by eluos 13y ago

zheng 13y ago
From the about page > We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript Even with the implied "everybody" being "everybody that would be interested in joining our site", this is a poor assumption. Not everyone is a ninja-rockstar web developer. In fact, some of the best content on HN comes from people who most likely don't know JS. I get the idea for the site, but the description seems very naive. (FWIW, I do know JS)
- pents90 13y ago
  > (FWIW, I do know JS) Assumption confirmed!
- krapp 13y ago
  I know javascript too, and i've been contributing, but I don't know much about Node.js apps, Express, Mongoose, MongoDB or Jade, so my contributions have been pretty meager. I'm still not entirely convinced that it serves as an adequate social filter, however, and I agree it might be too technically limiting to lead to a diverse userbase, but as an experiment I think it's worth watching.
- rpedela 13y ago
  Can't the about page be improved with a pull request?
- grannyg00se 13y ago
  You don't need to be a ninja-rockstar web developer to know js. But more importantly, I think it would be useful to emphasize the fact that pull requests don't necessarily need to be about improvements to code.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
  I don't know JS, and really don't have any interest in that site, but it looks like an easy enough language to figure out whatever the trick to it is.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    Famous last words. I'm not saying that JavaScript is a particularly difficult language to learn, but most people make the mistake of looking at it's syntax and then concluding that "well, it seems pretty similar to Java, I can't just start coding away instead of learning about the basics".
- untog 13y ago
  Well, it's not a poor assumption if the site is primarily content of interest to JavaScript developers. Which, given the self-selection, it will be.
- derefr 13y ago
  What language would you recommend, if you wanted to make something accessible for, say, teenagers who haven't even taken the perfunctory "Introduction to Control Structures In Blub" course yet? Javascript seems like a good guess for "language you might pick up just from everyday computer use." (Another two being, I think, Windows batch files, and Excel macros.)
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    I can't imagine how anyone would pick up bits of js just from everyday computer use. How many people even now the the "view source" button in their browser even exists? Excel and batch files / shell scripts I could see though.
  - SkyMarshal 13y ago
    Consider you'll probably lose lawyers like Grellas and a few others who contribute a great deal here (I think rayiner, and people in other disciplines (a few scientists here and there) who may not know programming but know their vertical better than most hackers and have a lot to contribute in that respect. It's an interesting idea for some kind of expertise test to contribute to a public forum, but it will be very self-selecting too.
nthitz 13y ago
The top link on Pullup is a link to this HN post with the title: "Pullup HN Update post, everyone upvote/comment"...
betawolf33 13y ago
Interesting idea. One thing that this would be good for is almost by default members get experience working with the technologies the site is running -- they learn to use Github, deploy node.js, etc. It gives them a working technology base for their own projects. One problem I foresee is that without a clear discussion about where the site is going, it could quickly become rife with lots of poorly-interacting features. Another is that delays in merging might well turn away valuable members. Still, interesting project.
- matt2000 13y ago
  Getting experience with the technology involved has definitely been a side effect. For example, I'm a whole bunch better at managing lots of pull requests in git versus a few days ago. It's been a really fun ride so far, no idea where it'll end up but excited to see what happens.
spindritf 13y ago
Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193353
- githulhu 13y ago
  It looks like they've had some success with their idea - the site looks quite a bit nicer and has had several new features added since then.
codegeek 13y ago
"We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript" Honest question and not trolling. Can I send a pull request to update this text to "We figured JavaScript is very popular these days....." EDIT: I just did it anyway. Feel free to accept/reject
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Perhaps "and the changes sufficiently small"?
unfunco 13y ago
Wouldn't it be easy to join by simply coming up with a username and adding it to https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userlist.js https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userl... – and then submitting a pull request for the merge?
- davidddavidson 13y ago
  Presumably you need to make some other code change/improvement as well with the pull request or else it will be rejected.
seshakiran 13y ago
why cloning hackernews?
- Spiritus 13y ago
  Why not?
drcode 13y ago
> We wondered what a site would be like where every user had contributed some code. It should mean no spam.. HAHAHAHA, good luck with that. (But still, a nice idea for a site)
1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
Yea, they still have a workflow problem that was never solved: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/5 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/5 On the bright-side at least the project is MIT. Good ol' MIT.
- neoveller 13y ago
  Already solved same-day: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/11 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/11 But never implemented / merged. Surprised the powers-that-be are resisting the most elegant solution. Then again, I came up with it, so I remain bitter and biased :)
  - tg3 13y ago
    I think the logic is that the current way isn't a big problem now that there is a standard of how you add your username to the file, and has allowed for some flexibility on the membership. The old saying, "don't fix it if it ain't broke."
    - neoveller 13y ago
      Have you read the issue? The problem is that the current way things are done requires manual merge requests because of merge conflicts resulting from the updated userlist array. The github api method is 1:1 with the requirements of joining the community and leaves no room for human error (unless the person in charge of pull requests does not standardize their own process for automatic merges).
      - 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
        The current solution is humorous: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userlist.js#L2 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userl...
derefr 13y ago
You know, it just occurred to me: if instead of pull requests, they just accepted all pushes... that'd sort of make this the programmatic equivalent of a wiki, wouldn't it? A site anyone could edit, in a more literal sense: not just the content, but the features. Oddly enough, you wouldn't necessarily require people to use the command-line for this, but nor would you need to build any editing UI; instead, the site could just, say, provide a context menu that contains links to the GitHub code-editor view of all the source files, and content files, that were used to render that particular element. If you really wanted to do this, to be practical, you'd need a pretty good continuous integration server to block the deployed build from failing, but for the codebase itself, I think it'd be a fun experiment to just let people do whatever they like. --- ...or, on a different tangent, you could have something like a CI server that evaluates and accepts/rejects pull requests based on arbitrary criteria. This'd basically be a black box (not part of the editable codebase) serving the same purpose that the site administration currently does. This process could have very specific rules, like, say, that not only does every test have to pass, but that the commit can't delete any code from a test. So features can be added to a codebase through this black box, but not removed. Attaching such a black-box-evaluator + automatic CI deployment process to the public web would almost be like throwing a genetic algorithm at your codebase: it would "evolve" roughly according to the constraints of the algorithm, even though people are doing the work.
- teraflop 13y ago
  > not only does every test have to pass, but that the commit can't delete any code from a test. Good idea, but this is easily gamed by e.g. adding a test that starts failing on a certain date. I've thought about this before, and it's really hard to come up with mechanisms for a system to incorporate untrusted modifications without totally collapsing. It would be hilarious to design a program that accepts Bitcoin payments, and automatically accepts merge requests from the highest bidder.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
EpicEng 13y ago
"We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript" Haha, that's funny. I guess all of the world's software runs on the web and is written in Silicon Valley. Oh wait, what's that you say, some programmers actually work on all those weird machines like satellites, assembly lines, medical devices, power plants, and even my car?! People actually write new operating systems, compilers, web servers, load balancers, and device drivers?! No way! Why don't they just make a web app for that stuff? Yeesh. I realize that you can't please everyone, but some people chose to live in their own little worlds.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  SpaceX rockets use C++, however if you can use C++ I really do not see how hard javascript can be.
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    It's not about it being hard, it's about this mentality that software == web development. There is so (so) much more software running different applications. I'm not saying that the developers of this site actually think that the world literally runs on JS, but I found that sentence amusing and somewhat ignorant. I work in systems. I don't really know JS. I do know C, C++, C#, Haskell, various dialects of Lisp, Python, and Ruby however. Why would I subject myself to learning JS unless I absolutely needed to?
    - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
      My point was that JS is so much like C++/C#/Java that you do not really need to learn anything new. If you know any of those languages you can already hack JS.
      - sitkack 13y ago
        Syntax yes, semantics no. It is dangerous to lump all those languages together because they look similar.
      - 13y ago

102 points by eluos 13y ago

zheng 13y ago

From the about page > We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript Even with the implied "everybody" being "everybody that would be interested in joining our site", this is a poor assumption. Not everyone is a ninja-rockstar web developer. In fact, some of the best content on HN comes from people who most likely don't know JS. I get the idea for the site, but the description seems very naive. (FWIW, I do know JS)

pents90 13y ago
> (FWIW, I do know JS) Assumption confirmed!
krapp 13y ago
I know javascript too, and i've been contributing, but I don't know much about Node.js apps, Express, Mongoose, MongoDB or Jade, so my contributions have been pretty meager. I'm still not entirely convinced that it serves as an adequate social filter, however, and I agree it might be too technically limiting to lead to a diverse userbase, but as an experiment I think it's worth watching.
rpedela 13y ago
Can't the about page be improved with a pull request?
grannyg00se 13y ago
You don't need to be a ninja-rockstar web developer to know js. But more importantly, I think it would be useful to emphasize the fact that pull requests don't necessarily need to be about improvements to code.
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
I don't know JS, and really don't have any interest in that site, but it looks like an easy enough language to figure out whatever the trick to it is.
- nawitus 13y ago
  Famous last words. I'm not saying that JavaScript is a particularly difficult language to learn, but most people make the mistake of looking at it's syntax and then concluding that "well, it seems pretty similar to Java, I can't just start coding away instead of learning about the basics".
untog 13y ago
Well, it's not a poor assumption if the site is primarily content of interest to JavaScript developers. Which, given the self-selection, it will be.
derefr 13y ago
What language would you recommend, if you wanted to make something accessible for, say, teenagers who haven't even taken the perfunctory "Introduction to Control Structures In Blub" course yet? Javascript seems like a good guess for "language you might pick up just from everyday computer use." (Another two being, I think, Windows batch files, and Excel macros.)
- EpicEng 13y ago
  I can't imagine how anyone would pick up bits of js just from everyday computer use. How many people even now the the "view source" button in their browser even exists? Excel and batch files / shell scripts I could see though.
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  Consider you'll probably lose lawyers like Grellas and a few others who contribute a great deal here (I think rayiner, and people in other disciplines (a few scientists here and there) who may not know programming but know their vertical better than most hackers and have a lot to contribute in that respect. It's an interesting idea for some kind of expertise test to contribute to a public forum, but it will be very self-selecting too.

nthitz 13y ago

The top link on Pullup is a link to this HN post with the title: "Pullup HN Update post, everyone upvote/comment"...

betawolf33 13y ago

Interesting idea. One thing that this would be good for is almost by default members get experience working with the technologies the site is running -- they learn to use Github, deploy node.js, etc. It gives them a working technology base for their own projects. One problem I foresee is that without a clear discussion about where the site is going, it could quickly become rife with lots of poorly-interacting features. Another is that delays in merging might well turn away valuable members. Still, interesting project.

matt2000 13y ago
Getting experience with the technology involved has definitely been a side effect. For example, I'm a whole bunch better at managing lots of pull requests in git versus a few days ago. It's been a really fun ride so far, no idea where it'll end up but excited to see what happens.

spindritf 13y ago

Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193353

githulhu 13y ago
It looks like they've had some success with their idea - the site looks quite a bit nicer and has had several new features added since then.

codegeek 13y ago

"We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript" Honest question and not trolling. Can I send a pull request to update this text to "We figured JavaScript is very popular these days....." EDIT: I just did it anyway. Feel free to accept/reject

dllthomas 13y ago
Perhaps "and the changes sufficiently small"?

unfunco 13y ago

Wouldn't it be easy to join by simply coming up with a username and adding it to https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userlist.js https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userl... – and then submitting a pull request for the merge?

davidddavidson 13y ago
Presumably you need to make some other code change/improvement as well with the pull request or else it will be rejected.

seshakiran 13y ago

why cloning hackernews?

Spiritus 13y ago
Why not?

drcode 13y ago

> We wondered what a site would be like where every user had contributed some code. It should mean no spam.. HAHAHAHA, good luck with that. (But still, a nice idea for a site)

1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago

Yea, they still have a workflow problem that was never solved: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/5 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/5 On the bright-side at least the project is MIT. Good ol' MIT.

neoveller 13y ago
Already solved same-day: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/11 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/pull/11 But never implemented / merged. Surprised the powers-that-be are resisting the most elegant solution. Then again, I came up with it, so I remain bitter and biased :)
- tg3 13y ago
  I think the logic is that the current way isn't a big problem now that there is a standard of how you add your username to the file, and has allowed for some flexibility on the membership. The old saying, "don't fix it if it ain't broke."
  - neoveller 13y ago
    Have you read the issue? The problem is that the current way things are done requires manual merge requests because of merge conflicts resulting from the updated userlist array. The github api method is 1:1 with the requirements of joining the community and leaves no room for human error (unless the person in charge of pull requests does not standardize their own process for automatic merges).
    - 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
      The current solution is humorous: https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userlist.js#L2 https://github.com/larvalabs/pullup/blob/master/config/userl...

derefr 13y ago

You know, it just occurred to me: if instead of pull requests, they just accepted all pushes... that'd sort of make this the programmatic equivalent of a wiki, wouldn't it? A site anyone could edit, in a more literal sense: not just the content, but the features. Oddly enough, you wouldn't necessarily require people to use the command-line for this, but nor would you need to build any editing UI; instead, the site could just, say, provide a context menu that contains links to the GitHub code-editor view of all the source files, and content files, that were used to render that particular element. If you really wanted to do this, to be practical, you'd need a pretty good continuous integration server to block the deployed build from failing, but for the codebase itself, I think it'd be a fun experiment to just let people do whatever they like. --- ...or, on a different tangent, you could have something like a CI server that evaluates and accepts/rejects pull requests based on arbitrary criteria. This'd basically be a black box (not part of the editable codebase) serving the same purpose that the site administration currently does. This process could have very specific rules, like, say, that not only does every test have to pass, but that the commit can't delete any code from a test. So features can be added to a codebase through this black box, but not removed. Attaching such a black-box-evaluator + automatic CI deployment process to the public web would almost be like throwing a genetic algorithm at your codebase: it would "evolve" roughly according to the constraints of the algorithm, even though people are doing the work.

teraflop 13y ago
> not only does every test have to pass, but that the commit can't delete any code from a test. Good idea, but this is easily gamed by e.g. adding a test that starts failing on a certain date. I've thought about this before, and it's really hard to come up with mechanisms for a system to incorporate untrusted modifications without totally collapsing. It would be hilarious to design a program that accepts Bitcoin payments, and automatically accepts merge requests from the highest bidder.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

EpicEng 13y ago

"We figured pretty much everybody knows JavaScript" Haha, that's funny. I guess all of the world's software runs on the web and is written in Silicon Valley. Oh wait, what's that you say, some programmers actually work on all those weird machines like satellites, assembly lines, medical devices, power plants, and even my car?! People actually write new operating systems, compilers, web servers, load balancers, and device drivers?! No way! Why don't they just make a web app for that stuff? Yeesh. I realize that you can't please everyone, but some people chose to live in their own little worlds.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
SpaceX rockets use C++, however if you can use C++ I really do not see how hard javascript can be.
- EpicEng 13y ago
  It's not about it being hard, it's about this mentality that software == web development. There is so (so) much more software running different applications. I'm not saying that the developers of this site actually think that the world literally runs on JS, but I found that sentence amusing and somewhat ignorant. I work in systems. I don't really know JS. I do know C, C++, C#, Haskell, various dialects of Lisp, Python, and Ruby however. Why would I subject myself to learning JS unless I absolutely needed to?
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
    My point was that JS is so much like C++/C#/Java that you do not really need to learn anything new. If you know any of those languages you can already hack JS.
    - sitkack 13y ago
      Syntax yes, semantics no. It is dangerous to lump all those languages together because they look similar.
    - 13y ago