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At the beginning of the year I was rewriting a SPA and looking for ideas on how to structure a web app. One project I looked at was Github Desktop and I think it has very clean code for an app.

https://github.com/desktop/desktop

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Now if only GitHub desktops actual UI/UX wasn't a poorly thought out mess of anti-patterns and anti-design.

What's wrong with it?

It completely ignores the simple UI paradigm of tabs or a sidebar. You should be able to move between repos without blowing away whatever you're in the middle of. I'm forced to be in one at all times, and I can't manage multiple repos at once via a simple sidebar. It's like it takes all of the inherent arcane complexity of Git and creates a UI that is so barebones it almost mocks you for deigning to ask for a GUI.

Interesting to know, thanks!

I use it daily and it works great. It doesn't do all that much, but what it does do saves me a bunch of time. I reach for the git CLI when something goes wrong, but that's not often.

Thanks for recommending this, I just browsed some files online and it's looking indeed amazing.

P.S. It's now easy to check a repo file by replace .com with .dev: https://github.dev/desktop/desktop

You can also just click the . (period) key when viewing any repo.

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