4 ms·

But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? I come back to programming again and again to solve problems or deepen unde

by 616c 13y ago

But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? I come back to programming again and again to solve problems or deepen understanding. Popularity is nice, but I post to Github because it is a public place, not to gain popularity. You will never see my code there, I am sure. Most Github repos I stumble upon are through other media and social networks mentioning cool stuff, just like HN. I use plenty of self-hosted tools and I respect those people just the same, maybe even more because they got their somehow without recommendations on the side of a page or trending repo notifcations and email updates. However, what do I wish I saw more of, like a lot now that I read up on Common Lisp, is people mirror aggressively on repo.or.cz, Github, Bitbucket and the like, when their site goes down or they lose interest. Github makes that easy, but we should not throw out the baby with the bath water: Git and tools like it encourage this simple reproduction of effort. I love open source because it is the only human organization I am familiar with that makes this and transparency such an important mantra (I am biased). In short, I will never get attention, but I hope to get understanding. I understand some people contribute for different reasons, but if you are on Github to get attention, the rest of "normalized" society is laughing at us anyway. I work in an IT department, and when I mention Github and source code and different languages, people stare at me like an alien. I will never get attention anywhere, but Github is not making that better or worse. (And to be fair, I know I am vastly oversimplifying your argument and I know I am overemphasizing it. This is not meant to troll, but I see a lot of people these days on Github and places who embody your one comment much more grandiosely, and it pisses me off. Who does open source for attention? Haha.)

mjolk 13y ago
>But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? Ugh, I hate that the term "circle jerk" is being applied to "a place where people share things they have made." Github is a self-described "social coding" website. If people did post code simply to show it off to others, do you feel this is better or worse than Facebook-esque low-content narcissism? I feel like you come to this with a feeling of superiority for some reason. >In short, I will never get attention, but I hope to get understanding. I understand some people contribute for different reasons, but if you are on Github to get attention, the rest of "normalized" society is laughing at us anyway. So what if people are on Github to get attention? Self-promotion can help you get a better job or help establish a reputation. The programming community is small and there's nothing wrong with wanting to participate. However, I posit that people push to public-read Github so that their code gets attention. When I post code to my tech blog, the broadcast audience is small. When I post it to Github, anyone can see/critique/benefit/suggest changes/easily discuss it with context. That's pretty cool. >I work in an IT department, and when I mention Github and source code and different languages, people stare at me like an alien. If you work in an IT department where Github or code-review is strange, that's a different issue. >I will never get attention anywhere, but Github is not making that better or worse. I don't even know how to respond to this.
- 616c 13y ago
  >> But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? > Ugh, I hate that the term "circle jerk" is being applied to "a place where people share things they have made." Well, I did not mean to sound superior. I do not think I can code well enough to look down at other people for coding ability. I just feel that people increasingly, like any social network, will work on projects on Github for attention and the content is questionable or strange. Social is transforming to a place to socialize, and the latter I do not like for Github or anywhere else for enthusiast programming. Recently, I had an idea because I got sick of TinyTinyRSS, a PHP-based feed reader with some good mobile app integration. I wrote a small README, uploaded a SVG of the MySQL DB structure to get an idea, and had not written any of the Python I described. I received three stars a week later, and not a single line of code yet. How does that even make sense? My point is people go around look for attention without effort. Yes, I know this describes every social network. I dislike them. You can balk at that ironically, because I am here, ostensibly another social network in different orange wrapper. Nonetheless, the kind of voting and sometimes absurd comment threads in nerd wars, like the whole Node.js commit changing gender and the Joyent employee who lost his job over it, were disgusting. I understood both sides of that issue, but people were declaring there sides with superfluous commentary in the pull request comments, and the hundred or so comments supporting various views on women and IT and superfluous garbage showed it was a hot topic. No one wanted to debate the merits of the commit or how to handle the issue as it pertained to the Node community with that specific issue, of course. It was just an angry Facebookesque flameware on Github. I hoped I would not see Github turn into that. I foolishly assumed it would be a long time before I saw that because, like it or not, computer culture, especially open source stuff, is still fringe. It is this that bothers me. Some people write cutesy meaningless libraries to get attention. I probably write garbage, code far worse than anyone of that ilk. But what I do not like is the stress Github is now turning the celebration of open programming and collaboration into, merely a celebrity contest. I cannot find the talk by one of the Node guys talking about how he started to be really affected by the number of stars he received on projects (and this is a guy that had projects in Node with sometimes three or four digits in his star count! I never broke more than 1, on anything). He said it ruined his focus drive and he had to re-center himself. My point here, whether you disagree or not, is that a social network for coding does not mean a socializing network where it is playground for different cliques, with random bullies and popular kids looking down at you. Github is not that yet, but my point was that prioritizing attention-getting when working in open source projects seems quite contrary to me. Ask Richard Hipp.

by 616c 13y ago

mjolk 13y ago

>But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? Ugh, I hate that the term "circle jerk" is being applied to "a place where people share things they have made." Github is a self-described "social coding" website. If people did post code simply to show it off to others, do you feel this is better or worse than Facebook-esque low-content narcissism? I feel like you come to this with a feeling of superiority for some reason. >In short, I will never get attention, but I hope to get understanding. I understand some people contribute for different reasons, but if you are on Github to get attention, the rest of "normalized" society is laughing at us anyway. So what if people are on Github to get attention? Self-promotion can help you get a better job or help establish a reputation. The programming community is small and there's nothing wrong with wanting to participate. However, I posit that people push to public-read Github so that their code gets attention. When I post code to my tech blog, the broadcast audience is small. When I post it to Github, anyone can see/critique/benefit/suggest changes/easily discuss it with context. That's pretty cool. >I work in an IT department, and when I mention Github and source code and different languages, people stare at me like an alien. If you work in an IT department where Github or code-review is strange, that's a different issue. >I will never get attention anywhere, but Github is not making that better or worse. I don't even know how to respond to this.

616c 13y ago
>> But why do we care? Does everyone post to Github for the circle jerk of attention? > Ugh, I hate that the term "circle jerk" is being applied to "a place where people share things they have made." Well, I did not mean to sound superior. I do not think I can code well enough to look down at other people for coding ability. I just feel that people increasingly, like any social network, will work on projects on Github for attention and the content is questionable or strange. Social is transforming to a place to socialize, and the latter I do not like for Github or anywhere else for enthusiast programming. Recently, I had an idea because I got sick of TinyTinyRSS, a PHP-based feed reader with some good mobile app integration. I wrote a small README, uploaded a SVG of the MySQL DB structure to get an idea, and had not written any of the Python I described. I received three stars a week later, and not a single line of code yet. How does that even make sense? My point is people go around look for attention without effort. Yes, I know this describes every social network. I dislike them. You can balk at that ironically, because I am here, ostensibly another social network in different orange wrapper. Nonetheless, the kind of voting and sometimes absurd comment threads in nerd wars, like the whole Node.js commit changing gender and the Joyent employee who lost his job over it, were disgusting. I understood both sides of that issue, but people were declaring there sides with superfluous commentary in the pull request comments, and the hundred or so comments supporting various views on women and IT and superfluous garbage showed it was a hot topic. No one wanted to debate the merits of the commit or how to handle the issue as it pertained to the Node community with that specific issue, of course. It was just an angry Facebookesque flameware on Github. I hoped I would not see Github turn into that. I foolishly assumed it would be a long time before I saw that because, like it or not, computer culture, especially open source stuff, is still fringe. It is this that bothers me. Some people write cutesy meaningless libraries to get attention. I probably write garbage, code far worse than anyone of that ilk. But what I do not like is the stress Github is now turning the celebration of open programming and collaboration into, merely a celebrity contest. I cannot find the talk by one of the Node guys talking about how he started to be really affected by the number of stars he received on projects (and this is a guy that had projects in Node with sometimes three or four digits in his star count! I never broke more than 1, on anything). He said it ruined his focus drive and he had to re-center himself. My point here, whether you disagree or not, is that a social network for coding does not mean a socializing network where it is playground for different cliques, with random bullies and popular kids looking down at you. Github is not that yet, but my point was that prioritizing attention-getting when working in open source projects seems quite contrary to me. Ask Richard Hipp.