177 Days of GitHub | Hacker News Reader

177 Days of GitHub

ryanseys.com

41 pointsaram35 comments

It would be fun if GitHub let me include private repositories in my public stats. Not everyone works solely on open source software, and the leaked information isn't particularly sensitive.

If you count private repos, my streak is getting rather ridiculous. 307 days so far: http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak.png

284 days in my streak, only public repos. https://github.com/zsiciarz

...

mmm hm.

your graph looks similar to the authors. Huge sprawling areas of meaningless changes, punctuated by actual work, which more or less was consistent throughout history.

Do you feel this is a meaningful metric?

I totally agree about the private repo thing. In fact I emailed them and they added to their Feature Request List™

I suggest you email <support@github.com> to let them know more than one person would like the feature :)

I didn't realise github didn't show private activity until after bragging to a friend about my thirty day streak, only to realise he only saw a four day streak.

Then it would be much easier to "cheat" the streak thingy, just make private repo and a script to make and push a XXX number of commits, each one with different timestamp and random data inside.

You can even "cheat" the streak to look cool https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti

Now that is brilliant. Bravo.

Is this healthy?

I think so. There's a big difference between coding every day and coding all day. Sometimes I only get one or two commits in. I spend the rest of my time running, rock climbing, reading, and socializing. Not having a TV or Netflix subscription really helps my productivity.

Also, I want to write software. If I didn't, doing it every day would take phenomenal willpower.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389019

Thanks for the link. I just checked and both URLs are the same - how come that mine was accepted as well?

I'm not sure but I think that after a certain number of days links can be submitted again.

This is pretty silly. I make contributions to my dotfiles repository almost every day, but I don't think that's a good thing. It just means I still haven't gotten my setup right.

I am far more proud of commits that solve blocking issues for other people than I am of the plethora of minor changes and additions to personal projects.

Agreed. At first, I was excited because I thought the author contributed to open source projects for 177 days straight.

However, after learning that many of the commits were to his personal website, my enthusiasm quickly faded.

Number of commits is a vanity metric.

I'm the author (not OP). I'm glad to see so much love for this post! :) If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here, on my blog, or email me at ryan@ryanseys.com

Thanks for the inspiration. After reading your post, I'm now on a current streak of 30 days and am using the "don't break the chain" philosophy for things other than coding.

I went through the guy's history and found a fair few BS commits. Quantity is not at all quality. This entire commit epenis measurement thing is ridiculous.

Just hit day 50! I think GitHub could really do some awesome things with that little contribution grid. And yes, having private repo's show as green-blocks is kinda crucial imo. I recently had a potential employer take a look at my account and mentioned how I have only made "a few" commits to my GitHub repos when I had stated that I am constantly working on stuff.

This has to be the stupidest reason to make a commit "to keep some stupid streak going." Commit because you've made a decent change, not because you haven't committed in the last 24 hours.

Longest streak I know of - my friend Mahmoud is up to 297 days (for public projects): https://github.com/mahmoud

My streak lasted 14 days. It was sadly broken because github used US time and my commit late night(Indian time) and the next day morning was grouped to the same day(US Day) :(.

I'm just on 162, planning on topping that next year :)

My 130-day current streak: https://github.com/thekarangoel/

You should aim for quality, not quantity.

exactly, you can commit every time you add new method but that doesn't count.

True but with source control there is a maxim

"Commit early and commit often"

Man, I like coding, but not enough to do it for 177 straight days. Life should get in the way sometimes.

1337 commit to top it off.. I like this more than the bots that draw pretty pixel art using fake commits.

Can you link to such a bot please?

https://github.com/akre54 has some GitHub art.

Here's one:

https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti

I made this one https://github.com/jbranchaud/commitart

We need a "random acts of code".

Number of days worked is mostly irrelevant. Ass-in-seat mentality is the road to mediocrity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com