GitHub's Next Move: Turn Everybody Into a Programmer 145
mattydread23 writes: This interview with GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath and product VP Kakul Srivastava explains a little more what GitHub is planning for the future — and how the company is trying to live up to its $2 billion valuation. Basically, if every developer in the world uses and loves GitHub, the next logical step is to turn more people into developers. "Even today, Wanstrath says, there are journalists and scientists who are using GitHub to find, build, and share data-driven applications that assist with research or interactive projects. The goal, then, is to gradually make it a lot easier for anybody to get started on the platform. As more and more people get educated as programmers from an early age, Wanstrath wants GitHub to be the service of choice for the next generation to really get their feet wet."
Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooner or later people will realize just how horribly overvalued we actually are, and we are desperately trying to do stupid things like turning everybody into a programmer so we can continue to prop up our overvalued company and continue to reap such awesome executive bonuses.
Honestly, WTF revenue do they have? I see so damned many companies being valued in the billions, and for what seems like no justifiable reason.
It's the .com era all over again ... "zomg, we have teh social" or whatever the daily buzzword is.
It's a great way to separate investors from their money. But I remain unconvinced any of these companies are actually worth anything in the billions.
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the .com era all over again ... "zomg, we have teh social" or whatever the daily buzzword is.
Yes it is. Lots of popular companies have either not figured out how to make a profit yet or have made their profits through means that were completely out of left-field.
There are three ways for an Internet company with no tangible products to make money as far as I can tell, the first is to charge the users for some service, the second is to present advertising to the user in exchange for money from the advertising entity, and the third is to collect statistics on the userbase and sell that data to others.
Github does not charge to host projects. Github therefore must use one of these three methods to make a profit if they don't start charging for use.
I do not understand the love for Github. Admittedly my direct experience with it was in the course of using a huge spaghetti-mess of a curriculum management program called Canvas, but I found it no easier than a traditional CVS repository and harder to use than the package management provided by my OS.
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Informative)
Github does not charge to host projects.
GitHub's page listing their charges [github.com]
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This is off-topic as all hell but your username reminds me of a guy I went through boot with. We were young Marines and that was generally his attitude when we buddied up. Crazy bastard is retiring soon but I think he's managed to score on most every continent. So, there's that.
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Is he saving Antarctica for retirement? ;)
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Nah, he's a big ol' redneck from Alabama. He rants and raves about it being too cold in Maine (insists that I live in the tundra) and bundles up even in the summer. I don't think he'll go to Antarctica unless ordered to do so. And, if ordered, he'll whine incessantly about the cold unless he's around people who are not Marines in which case he'll act like he loves the cold.
I'm only partially joking.
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In the oil patch we referred to snow as "okie" dust. You sprinkle some around and all the Okies and Texans disappear.
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Your name sure as hell better not be Boddie.
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Alright. The crowd is safe then. I used to tell civilians, frequently, "No, no... Just pet him and feed him a biscuit. He doesn't bite." We were very drunk. We still chill together. After boot we ended up stationed with each other for the entire duration of my stay. We took leave together, raised hell together, and drank a whole ton of beer together.
The "he doesn't bite" bit was sort of his nickname for a while. Of course, he finally did bite someone. We were in a bar, in Quantico area, where he had egged o
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Github does not charge to host projects. Github therefore must use one of these three methods to make a profit if they don't start charging for use.
It does: https://github.com/pricing [github.com]
Only public projects are free. And this is IMO a fair model. If you want to hide your code from the public, it means in most cases that your software is closed source. And that usually means you make money with it, where its just fair to give github a small part of it, these are basic economic "supply chain" rules. Conversely, if your code is public, it most likely is open source as well. There is some public content on github which is not open source licensed, but most of
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Github does not charge to host projects. Github therefore must use one of these three methods to make a profit if they don't start charging for use.
It does: https://github.com/pricing [github.com]
Only public projects are free. And this is IMO a fair model. If you want to hide your code from the public, it means in most cases that your software is closed source. And that usually means you make money with it, where its just fair to give github a small part of it, these are basic economic "supply chain" rules. Conversely, if your code is public, it most likely is open source as well. There is some public content on github which is not open source licensed, but most of it is.
And about learning git, it has a steep learning curve, but once you know it, its real fun. CVS isn't distributed, I really like git for its speed and features like git blame. Sadly many people think git == github.
If I want to hide my projects from the public I'm not going to put them on someone else's server.
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Insightful)
This this this this.
If I want to share the code, I'll use one of the public repos. If I don't want to share the code, that includes sharing via a server I don't control. I still might use Git style repo (or not, there are plenty of options), but I would self host.
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This is what I am wondering. What is the benefit of a private repo hosted on someone else's platform that you don't control. Any company with source they want to keep private would probably be hosting themselves. I am sure there are use cases but how much money do they actually make with private repos?
I myself use github and its great. But if I am hacking around with concept stuff I usually just push it to my own private server, not to a github private repo i would have to pay for.
There is also gitlab i
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Is it possible to access your Github repository from pretty well anywhere you've got a net connection? In that case, it'd be useful when you needed distributed access and didn't want to run a public-facing Git server.
I have my private repo on Dropbox, which has the same security issues, but I have to take the small additional effort of managing the repo. (If Dropbox reveals the repo, or the FBI hacks in, I really don't care except on principle.)
Re: Translation ... (Score:1)
The whole point of githib is their gui. And yes, they sell it, and that's a thriving business.
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I think you are still referring to public repos, which is great. I have an account and projects I make public. It's the private for pay repos I don't really understand the market for.
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I think the big benefit for a lot of the companies (especially small ones) is that you don't have to maintain the server.
I know I know... setting up a git server is easy.... but if you open up that server to the outside world in any fashion, you basically open up your network to attack.
Are you a SaaS company? Your software isn't your primary business, so it's not a super-huge deal if it gets compromised... but maybe you process credit cards and require PCI compliance or something along those lines. You've n
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Ok, thanks for the insight.
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Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I want to hide my projects from the public I'm not going to put them on someone else's server.
Well, that's you. I'm not a security expert and I'm not a big corporation that can afford to hire one. So for me, it's probably more secure to use someone else's server.
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Well, that's you. I'm not a security expert and I'm not a big corporation that can afford to hire one. So for me, it's probably more secure to use someone else's server.
That's fine, but make sure you have backups, because 'cloud' failure is surprisingly common, even with large companies like Microsoft.
And the rule still applies: if you don't want it to become public, don't put it on the internet (or alternately, if you do put it on the internet, don't be surprised when it becomes public).
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Backups are always necessary - though in this case it's a bit silly since we are talking about git...
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That's not very good advice. What if there is a vulnerability discovered in gitolite or any of the underlying libraries or OS? Am I competent enough to make sure that I keep Linux always up-to-date? Do I stay on top of security news enough to know that I need to work around the newest hole in ssh?
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If I want to hide my projects from the public I'm not going to put them on someone else's server.
GitHub also covers this case. They allow you to host your own instances of their code and provide VM appliances that do this. Of course, if you're a small company then you have to balance the risk of hosting with GitHub vs the cost (and risk) of hiring someone who knows about security to manage your internal infrastructure. Generally, the latter only makes sense if you have enough of an internal demand to be able to offset the costs among multiple projects.
Of course, there's not a huge amount of diffe
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"Github does not charge to host projects." - Wrong. A number of github services require a paid account. (Primarily private repositories...)
https://github.com/pricing [github.com]
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Given your mention of Canvas, my guess is you probably work IT in higher ed. I do (as of more recent years) and my general impression is that everyone is stuck on decades old technology that wasn't even that great when it was new (i.e.: COBOL reports, SQR, Pro*C, etc). I don't even know what half the crap is, to be honest. However, I'm doing my damndest to drag us somewhere close to state of the art and I'm the only one
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Buzz word compliant with a good brand image. All that is required is some market share growth to maximize synergistic leverage of crowd sourced BYOD distributed 24/7 virtualized cloud based components.
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It's the .com era all over again ... "zomg, we have teh social" or whatever the daily buzzword is.
Not exactly. The dot com era was your grandmother and her cats investing in the latest tech stock tip that inflated the bubble. These days its too much money chasing too few investment opportunities that offer a higher rate of return in this low interest rate environment. If the Fortune 500 companies stopped buying back their own stock, the overall market would be much lower than it is today.
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Worse than that. During the .com era your grandmother and her cats knew not a damned thing about tech.
The problem was every idiot in the financial sector telling clients they should be investing in .com stuff because it was the way of the future and they had to get in on the ground floor.
The industry itself created the stock bubble .. in no small part to they could sell their share
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I don't understand why people keep taking this crap seriously.
The same reason people buy lottery tickets. I find it easier to pick up discarded lottery tickets in the parking lot and enter the numbers for the second chance drawings on the lotto website. Been doing that for eight years, entering 600+ tickets and not winning a damn thing. But it only cost me a few minutes of my time. I may win someday.
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LOL ... you know, at least people playing the lottery generally know it's gambling.
When people get told they need to be investing in speculative IPOs because that's how you get rich, I question if they realize how terrible that advice is for most people, and how it's just people in the financial industry selling products?
All those poor schmucks who got stuck holding .com era stocks ... either they went loopy and thought they'd be gazillionaires (and should have know they were essentially placing a bet), or
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The reason is that IT is still relatively immature field, and as such there's far greater opportunities than in established fields. Perhaps GitHub will die or just barely linger on, but there's also a chance it'll take off. By contrary, there's no chance whatsoever that you'll be able to displace Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Chinese manufacturers, etc. even if you invest b
Oh, this has fail written all over (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, if every developer in the world uses and loves GitHub, the next logical step is to turn more people into developers.
If the starting point is false, then this has no way to succed.
Re:Oh, this has fail written all over (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm a developer, and I neither use nor love GitHub. Sorry.
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And is trivial to deploy on a rented VPS for $3 a month, and lets me host as much crap as I have space for. For free.
Since sourceforge is still around, it should be a 30 billion dollar company. Not to mention sourceforge is superior to github.
Software Engineering as unskilled labor (Score:1)
So basically people expect everyone to do their own code. Fantastic. It will be a hobby, instead of a career, then? What's the rationale? And why would people give a flying fuck about programming anyway? Half of the world functions mostly on feelings, not deep logical reasoning.
Re: Software Engineering as unskilled labor (Score:3)
they feel running cvs is worth 2 billion.
Slight over valuation?
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No, they feel having successfully conflated git (the software) and their service in the minds of investors/the public/a helluva-a-lot of developers is worth 2 billion.
You know, all that value Linus left on the table for the good of mankind.
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I seem to recall a similar sentiment with QBASIC? I played with QBASIC. Yes, yes I am ashamed. However, give me a few days and I can code poorly in any language I've tried. And, trust me, it's awful.
Needless to say, my foray into QBASIC was not long-lived. C it was. Eventually, I was able to hire professionals. They despised me and eventually asked me to stop helping. I complied because, you know, that's why I hired them. Actual quote, pretty much verbatim: "Code comments get commented out, in the code, and
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I seem to recall a similar sentiment with QBASIC? I played with QBASIC. Yes, yes I am ashamed.
Don't be. I've seen it used to do real work from code that was bashed together in a moment, such as for analyzing captured IR sensor data to determine the coding. The problems come when people expect people to maintain their little BASIC tools, or flesh them out into more complete projects. It would make more sense to reinvent them.
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BASIC gets a bad rep primarily based on older versions of BASIC. Older BASIC didn't have any support for structured programming. Every line had a line number (just as every instruction has an address, because that's the abstraction that people designing it were comfortable with). There was no stack, no scoping. Flow control worked solely by GOTO {line number} statements (and you could do truly evil things with it, because the line number could be computed).
By the time QuickBASIC (and QBASIC, the cut-do
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Even when management can't do it, Visual Basic can cause trouble simply because they know about it. I was once paid to create a huge abortion of a personnel/resource tracking application inside of Excel, where the managers could each work on a sheet and then through the magic of VBA, upper management could combine all of the data, query Exchange for personnel data, and then make pivot tables. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted - so I made it.
He got fired, but the behemoth lives on. For a while I
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Back in the day (like around 1960) COBOL was going to remove the need for programmers. Programming would be so easy the management could do it. You know what happened.
Management has been trying to come up with some way to get along without us pesky programmers for over fifty years. We don't dress management-professional, we get paid too much money, we typically have to be treated as individuals, and we don't act like nice corporate drones.
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But programming is simple! A child can do it! Why, just the other day my little nephew Marvin showed me a program that makes a box move around on the screen why going "boop! boop! boop!". Then little Cindy showed me the website she made full of pony pictures! With kittens!
people will look back on this and compare it to pe (Score:2)
balls.com, van.com and every other 1.0 failure.
This is the beginning of the end.
Let the bubble pop
Ecosystem. (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do we want to turn everyone in a coder?
It's the same as turning everyone into a pianist or turning every biologists into physicist. It's about the ecosystem, we need to be different to thrive.
I, personally love mathematics, but would hate it if everyone were "forced"/"encouraged" into it. It's supposed to be fun and not a chore or imperative they needed to complete. I have had enough of that in my life.
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I think we should be exposing middle and high school students to some coding. Every student who graduates high school should have the experience of writing a piece of code to perform some simple task and using it in some useful way.
I also think every student should have the experience of playing a simple song on some sort of instrument. It's not about turning everyone into a pianist, but to give everyone the experience of what it is like to play music.
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Why do we want to turn everyone in a coder?
To sell them things. Didn't you read the summary?
Note also the statement is kind of an advertisement, implying, "everyone is using Github. So why aren't you?"
Seriously!? (Score:2)
Not this shit again (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, STOP trying to make everybody a programmer. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't happen.
Why not make everyone a plumber or a mechanic or an insurance agent? BECAUSE IT'S STUPID, just like trying to make everyone a programmer.
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Seriously, STOP trying to make everybody a programmer. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't happen.
Why not make everyone a plumber or a mechanic or an insurance agent? BECAUSE IT'S STUPID, just like trying to make everyone a programmer.
You make a good point. On that topic, schools (rather than trying to make all kids into programmers) should give kids enough programming literacy so that they can interact thoughtfully with real programmers. Additionally, teaching kids to think like programmers (logic, process, systems, etc) would be a benefit generally for many future professions.
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Seriously, STOP trying to make everybody a programmer. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't happen.
Why not make everyone a plumber or a mechanic or an insurance agent? BECAUSE IT'S STUPID, just like trying to make everyone a programmer.
You make a good point. On that topic, schools (rather than trying to make all kids into programmers) should give kids enough programming literacy so that they can interact thoughtfully with real programmers. Additionally, teaching kids to think like programmers (logic, process, systems, etc) would be a benefit generally for many future professions.
It'll be interesting to see if the drive to turn all children into programmers will increase the incidence of aspergers.
Me, I hate programming. Sometimes I do it when I absolutely have to but afterward I feel like I'm being turned into a robot by the process of having to 'think like a programmer'.
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You make a good point. On that topic, schools (rather than trying to make all kids into programmers) should give kids enough programming literacy so that they can interact thoughtfully with real programmers.
I think it would be great if schools taught kids about the basics of programming, i.e. logical thought, breaking problems or tasks into pieces so they can be solved step-by-step, and similar conceptual skills.
But trying to teach every child to program is silly, just as it would be to teach every child to be a chemical engineer or riveter or botanist. Give them an idea of what it's all about and let them decide if they want to pursue it.
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Because it's not a job. It's a skill. My wife works with doctors that were told "You don't need to learn how to type, you'll have a secretary to do that". Years ago that's how it worked. Now everyone is their own 'keyboardist'.
When I graduated highschool it was important to put that we were proficient in "Microsoft Word and Excel". I dropped that from my resume years ago because it's just assumed now.
Computer Scientists / Software Engineers designing good code and architectures will still exist. But your av
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In 20 years "Programming" will be up there with where "keyboarding" is now.
I seriously doubt that unless you're referring to spreadsheet "programming" or the like.
Of course I may be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time and certainly not the last, but honestly, I just don't see it happening.
Uncle Mike and Aunt Jenny aren't going to be coding anything, and the vast majority of people will neither need to code or know how. Just like the vast majority of people now neither need to plumb their home or know how.
If anything, better interfaces and smarter software will more likely reduce
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Just like the vast majority of people now neither need to plumb their home or know how.
Do the vast majority of people know how to type? Programming is closer to typing than it is to plumbing.
What will they be coding? PBX interfaces? Missile guidance software? Process control analytics? What will they be writing database queries for?
Automating the boring stuff [automateth...gstuff.com]. Why would someone that doesn't do anything with PBX phones need to code for them? Why would a doctor need to program missile guidance software?
I seriously doubt that unless you're referring to spreadsheet "programming" or the like.
Is using VBA to automate parts of a spread sheet or using Python to do something similar not programming?
What, pray tell, will all these people be coding in, and what will they be coding for? What will they need to write code for?
It's looking like python. And doing what ever "they" do normally but want to automate. It's easier to teach a mechanical engineer
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My group won't hire new engineers that don't know how to program at least slightly. Doing stuff 'by hand' the old way is gone. Everyone I know in my group programs in some form or another.
It may shock you to learn that not everyone has a job that requires a keyboard. It sounds bizarre, but it's true. (I've actually worked at some of those jobs.)
The fact that you require it in your job or field is fine, but your gun-slit view of the world doesn't apply to every other field and discipline. I find that a lot of people tend to think that their experiences are similar to everyone else's experiences or day-to-day life events. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it's just not true.
One quick example
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It may shock you to learn that not everyone has a job that requires a keyboard. It sounds bizarre, but it's true. (I've actually worked at some of those jobs.)
So are you saying those people don't know how to type? Being able to type has been accepted as the 'minimum' level of knowledge to function on the internet in modern society. Going forward Programming will be.
This goes beyond work and what 'field' people are in. It's akin to hiring your own butler to do often repeated tasks. (The boring stuff).
but that's a far cry from "coding" or programming.
No it's not. Are you coding something? Then it's coding. Just because someone can't type 100 WPM doesn't mean they can't type.
She has no need to learn any programming, and there isn't any kind of task that could be automated in her field where she would need to learn programming
You can't see a world where people just
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You can't see a world where people just insert their hand into a machine and a gcode nail printer paints on designs?
They already have those, and this is a perfect example of you being in your own little silo- it shows you don't understand the nail business (just one example) and the underlying reason why you cannot imagine a world where everyone doesn't wake up in the morning and start coding. Let me explain....
Most women don't go to a nail salon to interact with a machine. There are already nifty little machines that print nail designs on fingernails [google.com], and you won't ever find them in nail salons, period. Not because they
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They work on cars, and like doctors, if they need some code written 99.99999% of them will simply hire someone who will do it right, and in 1/100th the time it would take them.
Just like they hire typists to type up their notes these days?
That's why this "everybody needs to learn to code" crap is such utter nonsense. You work with computers, good for you, but not everyone does and of the people that do, most of them are not ever going to need or want to code anything, ever.
Just like not everyone needs to do algebra ever, just like not everyone needs to know Shakespeare ever. It's going to be a part of an education going forward. It's going to be the bare minimum required to function in the 21st century. Just like MS Office and knowing how to type is now.
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Just like they hire typists to type up their notes these days?
My doctor usually has his Medical Assistant type his notes, sometimes he dictates the notes and has them transcribed. I'm sure he does some typing but he has a Medical Assistant and a transcription machine because his job isn't to type- it's to work with patients. I'm pretty sure he doesn't consider "typing" to be one of his general duties any more than he considers restocking the paper towel dispenser to be one of his duties.
My doctor is never going to learn programming, because that's not his job, that's
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I learned in school
I've never used any of the Shakespeare I was made to memorize.
The point is that you learned it. Just like everyone will learn programming.
My doctor usually has his Medical Assistant type his notes
And how old is he? Has his hospital switched over to EMR? My wife is a recently graduated doctor, they're trying to replace those guys as fast as they can. They don't even do dictation anymore.
. If you really think that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will be programming in 10 or 20 years
On a basic level, yes. They're not going to be writing full programs they're going to scripting to make their lives easier. Even if they don't use it at work.
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Yes, except they're mostly called secretaries today.
Most people don't have secretaries. Actually very few people in industry have their own secretaries. They're normally reserved for VP level.
Engineers do their own typing now.
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Plumber 1: WE NEED TO RIP OUT THE TILES IN YOUR BATHROOM
Plumber 2: Oh, just replace this faucet, no problem. But the part alone will cost $75.
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On the other hand, I can also see the day when plumbers, mechanics, and insurance agents are all replaced by robotics and software. . . what are those displaced people supposed to do at that point?
History Lessons [Re:Not this sh*t again] (Score:2)
Agreed. I've been around a while and see this claim re-pop up every 5 or so years in a different dress.
The closest I ever saw it happening on a large scale was Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet) keyboard macros that mirrored the Lotus menu key shortcuts (letters). With the "if" function and a goto-cell option, it became Turing Complete.
The key to success was that it leveraged something users already knew:
1. The menu letters (it was the DOS days), the equivalent of API calls.
2. Formulas. Accountant types gotta know t
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You just clued me in to a sure-seller title:
"Nursing Node.JS Code Back to Health for Dummies Unleashed in 7 Days."
Fun thing is... (Score:1)
...if they succeeded they'd displace every other industry and profession, which would include a large part of semiconductor manufacturing and even the humble local electrician. Contrary to popular belief it actually takes a while and lots of study to become a good programmer. It's not something you can "do on the side", at least not easily.
Yes, you can replace every electrician with a programmer, but how are you going to power that computer?
Methinks this is some massive conspiracy to turn everyone into a QA
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I'll just nip down to the makerspace and 3D print a generator.
Adapt GitHub To Other Uses (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the next logical step is to adapt GitHub to do change management on other kinds of documents, not just source code files. It would probably help out a lot of students for them to learn how to manage all their essays and other assignments with a change management system. Working on group projects would be a lot easier if it was easier to share files and merge changes with people working on the same project.
Working with a big MS Word document with a group of people using the "track changes" feature is a lot more painful than sharing a software project between a bunch of developers. But it shouldn't be. There is a huge need for people in other fields to be able to collaborate on a document, and see how it has changed over time.
Just imagine if all the bills that were written were entered into a source control system with hourly commits before they were voted for in Congress. I would be much nicer if people were able to easily see what changed as the bill approached the floor for voting. It would be a lot harder to slip things in at the last moment.
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Working with a big MS Word document ...
I think I've spotted your problem.
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Working with a big MS Word document with a group of people using the "track changes" feature is a lot more painful than sharing a software project between a bunch of developers.
Perforce tries to fill the niche of version control for files like word files, but doesn't do it overly well. Unfortunately, p4 only discriminates between `text` and `binary` files, and because .docx is considered binary by p4, there is no way to do a diff patch; one can only look at the commit history for that file. GitHub would have a lot of work ahead of them to handle files such as the likes of MS formats. I'd be interested to see their approach.
Sharepoint was starting to get pretty slick with thei
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Yeah, there's definitely some work to do, especially considering a lot of word processors use binary or complicated xml formatting to store documents. I think that it would be a lot easier to build a system if it used something like HTML and CSS to store the document. Maybe that's what we need to get people to stop using MS Word. A word processor that actually makes collaboration easier.
People aren't going to move over to OpenOffice if the only selling points are "it's open source/open standards" and "it'
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This, 100%. There are so many business applications for version control of documents of all kinds. It can be super-useful, it's not that hard to learn, and there is no reason at all to limit the system's use to "things that are part of a software build."
The alternative is the status quo at most places... a directory full of the same document appended with _v1, -v2, _v3.0, 3.1_EdChanges, v3Sandra1, _4-1-2015, _2015-04-03_v6... then just having to sort by date anyway, hoping the most recent one is really the
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Working with a big MS Word document with a group of people using the "track changes" feature is a lot more painful than sharing a software project between a bunch of developers.
Well to be fair that's because you're using it wrong. For the use case you just gave you should be using Sharepoint instead. All that being said, there's other, much better ways of handling this same problem... confluence and google docs just to name a couple.
Just imagine if all the bills that were written were entered into a source control system with hourly commits before they were voted for in Congress. I would be much nicer if people were able to easily see what changed as the bill approached the floor for voting. It would be a lot harder to slip things in at the last moment.
While I love this idea I'll put money down on the table right now betting that if implemented, and all other things being equal, it still won't change the status quo in Washington.
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Last time I looked, Google Docs left a lot to be desired. Many features were missing that have been part of Microsoft Word for over a decade. Last I checked, you couldn't even create your own custom styles. You can redefine what Heading 1-6 can do, but you can't even rename them which would be nice if you wanted to remember what the different styles are being used for.
They need to host non-code (Score:2)
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Github pages.
OMG, $2 billion??? (Score:2)
I know that's funny money pre-IPO valuation, but come on guys, why isn't ANYONE saying "it's the dotcom bubble all over again, run! Save your investments!" Most of us lived through the first dotcom bubble and watched the market for anything technology related go insane, then collapse completely. It's going to happen again.
Github is cool right now because it's at the nexus of these social media startups, that's it. It's a useful tool, sure, but trying a silly idea like "making everyone a coder" just sounds l
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I know that's funny money pre-IPO valuation, but come on guys, why isn't ANYONE saying "it's the dotcom bubble all over again, run! Save your investments!"
Because they lost their investments in the last one. If I had a nickel for everyone I know who was worth over a million and failed to cash out, I'd at least have a pretty good jingle in my pocket.
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Flux: A New Approach to System Intuition .. (Score:2)
Finally a solution! (Score:2)
Programmer for 30+ years (Score:1)
And I've never used GitHub.
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37 years here. Never used GitHub either.
I use Git, for sure, but there's no way my employer would let their code be stored outside of the company servers, for good reason.
Maybe you should focus... (Score:3)
... on not introducing toxic Codes of Conduct that split apart your community and are downright bigoted in order to push a particular agenda ?
Won't have to "make" new developers if you don't chase your existing ones away.
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... on not introducing toxic Codes of Conduct that split apart your community and are downright bigoted in order to push a particular agenda ?
Won't have to "make" new developers if you don't chase your existing ones away.
This is obviously something you have followed closely and thought about.
As someone who doesn't use github much and isn't familiar with this particular drama, can you elaborate?
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Basically, a developer for Opal made an off-color comment on Twitter, in his spare time. Because he had "Developer for Opal" on his Twitter profile, users that were offended made a bug report about it :
https://github.com/opal/opal/i... [github.com]
From there after a long string of drama, Github introduced a Code of Conduct, but it contained language such as "We will not act on Reverse Racism" (aka, non-priviledge races making harassing/defaming comments about whites) and other bigoted "progressive" ideals.
They were mas
So how are they going to do that? (Score:1)
I don't see anything saying how they plan to turn everyone into developers. It looks like they just plan to get as many people on the platform as possible. How does that make them into developers? Throwing out a bunch of code (that may or may not be any good) that anyone can use does not make them developers. In fact it makes the problem worse. We already have too many cut and paste coders. Or ones who are addicted to frameworks and other libraries and can't solve even a simple problem without them. You wan
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They hit that point like Shenmue on the Dreamcast, the only way to be profitable is if everyone bought two copies...
They have hit market saturation. They've got the coke brand recognition, and to keep getting this insane VC funding they need to turn git into something everyone can and will use.
There simply isn't enough programmers to sustain them.
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There are mooooore than one of us, though I don't do it AC.