Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Apologies for the hot take, but imo GitHub has been really knocking it out of the park with terrible ideas lately (remember how everyone fell all over themselves during the Copilot release?). This is an absolutely worthless visualization that only impresses those that haven't heavily worked with visualizations. A few points right off the bat:

    - Labels are way too small, so you'll need to zoom in..
    - ...but if you zoom in, you'll need to pan...
    - ...and if you need to pan, you lose context
    - Hovering over "connected files" is just a jumbled mess

Case in point: look at the `paperjs/paper.js` example they themselves provide. There's a big circle called "packages" and inside that circle, two smaller circles that all contain the exact same files: "package.json," "index.js," and "README.md" -- how is this insightful in any way? I need to go to the repo to actually see that one of the folders is called "paper-jsdom" and the other one "paper-jsdom-canvas." The visualization literally confuses me more than just looking at the repo.

I don't mean to be overly negative, but it's just not a good visualization and no one will ever seriously use this.

This is a Show HN post. While you have valid criticisms (small labels, using filenames as labels produces lots of package.json, etc.), the way you shared it certainly violates the site guidelines (“Be kind”).

You knew you were being harsh and let your emotional response get to you. But, you should remind yourself that a person was on the other side of this post, and she cared enough to share it. Even if you feel the visualization is unacceptably bad, you should seek to find a way to provide constructive criticism. You’ve got the beginnings of actionable feedback, it’s just covered in invective language (though directed at the work not the person, so that’s something!).

Way back when I was in school and much less confident than I a now, it was actually comments like yours that hurt the most. What you're essentially saying is "I know what was said is true and I don't dispute that, but you shouldn't have said it".

For me this was like a second blow. Criticism always hurts, but at least the first guy thought I was tough enough to take it. You, on the other hand, not only agree with the first guy, you think I'm so feeble that I need a "nice" person like you to shield me.

When people stick their neck out they will sometimes get hurt. This is totally normal and a natural way of learning and developing. Safe spaces don't make successful people. The comment you are replying to didn't even seem emotional to me and certainly didn't attack the person. It was just honest feedback.

Being right doesn’t excuse you from being kind. You can critique something in a constructive way. This isn’t about safe spaces, it’s about keeping communication civil.

You are reading way too into the post you responded to. At no point did they agree that the OP is speaking the truth. They said to rephrase it to not just be negativity. But constructive too.

You then bring up safe spaces which is irrelevant. It appears you had an agenda from the get go and are attempting to create a narrative here.

> They said to rephrase it to not just be negativity. But constructive too.

On the one hand I agree with you and I personally always try to be positive whenever possible. But nobody owes you constructive criticism and sometimes it's just not possible to think of anything positive. An attitude of "no negativity here" will just create a culture of yes men which isn't actually constructive at all.

I have no "agenda". I have opinions and I have experiences. I expressed how I feel because I assume the commenter wanted to do good and they'd like to know that it's actually harmful to some people, like me.

I suppose I also can't believe someone would feel the need to come to the rescue for the OP (as if they can't defend themselves) after such a harmless post. There's no personal attacks, no strong language, nothing. The assumption seems to be the OP is too soft to take it, which I can't help but think has sexist underpinnings.

i used agenda in a way of everyone having an agenda to have people see their perspective as a good one if not correct one.

You quoted me saying “not to just be negative” then went on to talking about “an attitude of no negativity here”. Those two aren’t the same thing.

The above and especially your last paragraph appear to again repeat your pattern of having a typical “anti-woke”* agenda. Along with strong assumptions you build into innocuous situations. It seems like trolling because of how wild the last line is. Which gender is it even sexist against? I don’t know OP’s gender. Why would this ever be the assumption? It’s so far out of right field.

* I don’t care for a handful of things from either side of the aisle myself. But there’s a difference between that and trying to shoe horn anti-woke stuff into every convo.

> but you shouldn't have said it

Isn’t quite right. “You shouldn’t have said it like that”.

I totally agree that criticism is necessary, and that pandering doesn’t help people. Being constructive is just more productive. If the goal is to get the person to change what they’re doing, be constructive.

For example, “instead of repeating ‘package.json’, the labels should be semantic (e.g., < package name >)” would have been constructive.

Bravo! You need to be there on every one of my Show HNs in the distant past. And so many other's--Where were you shepherding the gnawing HN hoards, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?

I don't think it's useful in it's current form (except perhaps for newcomers to a project to have an idea of the file structure at a glance).

But I also don't think they're trying to present this as a new killer feature they've been working on for years.

I'm pretty sure this is just an experiment/exploration done by a few people over a few months to see what they found, then they presented their results.

Spot on! It's a space I've been wanting to explore, and so have been tinkering with it this last week while we're in between larger projects. I definitely don't see it being a product in it's current gotten, but wanted to share the exploration! Although I will say that the more I've been visualizing different repos, the more convinced I am that it's more useful than is easy to convey.

Have you looked at CodeScene at all?

I hadn't seen it until today - looks like a useful product!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

The guy literally says he timeboxed his exploration on this experiment.

I think it's pretty cool and would love to have the option to navigate repositories like this.

Author is a woman.

Sex is irrelevant.

It’s generally considered polite to refer To people the way they want to be referred to. It’s relevant.

It's absolutely relevant and was my mistake. I would have corrected it if I had seen it in time – apologies to the author.

...for the HNers who love to talk about how sexism or implicit bias doesn't exist in tech...

Any people doing any automatic assuming likely also assumed the person is white, not homeless, well dressed, no mental health issues, and so on. It’s how things work. There’s so few people who actually feel the way you’re describing things.

Being sexist and having implicit biases is not the same thing.

The OP did apologize for getting the gender wrong so happy ending there.

While I wholeheartedly agree, I'd argue there is value in having R&D teams tinkering around with different ideas. They may churn out duds, but theoretically they will produce something valuable eventually.

It's probably useless - but it would make for a killer powerpoint slide at your next meeting, wouldn't it?

I admire the people who work on pet projects like this one and share them with the world despite getting criticism that is just barely constructive. These are merely design issues- not things that stem from it being a terrible idea. It's a good idea that just needs a v2 design, there is no need to go on a diatribe about unrelated events, this was clearly just someone taking an idea they thought could be valuable and sharing it with others in the hopes they might gain value from it also.

I have needed quick visual fingerprints of repos for a very long time, even just a crude outlay of the filesizes was what I needed but this provides even more. I just don't like the tone of this criticism, and nobody would ever do Show HN's ever again if "it's just not a good visualization and no one will ever seriously use this" was the standard for commentary.

As a tool for exploring a repo it does have some flaws in navigating, but as a tool for comparing the complexity of two repos it looks very useful. It's immediately obvious where the depth, complexity and 'weight' of something lies. That's useful.

Plus, even if the result isn't perfect, the fact people are exploring alternatives to a tree structure is great, because trees suck for anything that's broad and deep, especially in a language you're new to that doesn't have familiar patterns.

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