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Comment by jw2013 | Hacker News Reader

jw2013

This basically reduces to two questions:

a) is github monoculture is bad?

I really disagree with author's view on the emphasize on public github project in job interview process is misplaced. Yes, it will not eval how good you are at your previous job, but the problem is it is very very hard to find how good you are at previous job. Doing open source project at spare time is a positive sign of interest in programming. If in the interview process you said I don't have a github account, but I put all my repo at abc.com, I am pretty sure it will work, too.

And I don't care the monoculture if its service is the best in this field. Why use the second best if the best is possble? I would like to be an earlier adoptor if there are better service, even if there are currently no user.

b) how to disrupt github?

That I have no idea. What github does not provide but is really needed? I do not know. Would love to hear ideas.

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> b) how to disrupt github?

There are certainly areas that github could use some improvement. One of the basic features that I see as currently missing is actual side-by-side Diffs like those available in Chromium Code Reviews[1]. This makes it so much easier to review code changes and thus improves the experience of collaboratively working on a project. The Github folks are smart people, so I'm sure they know this and yet years after launch this is still not available in Github while they continue adding things like improved map diffs [2] which while nice features on their own, it only serves to show that a good code diff experience is not as important to them now.

Secondly, I find Github search to be lacking in terms of fulfilling its potential. It seems we all agree that Github is the number one place most people put their public code on. This is great, we have one central public repository. And yet searching for, finding and discovering good code on Github is not as easy as it should be. I argue that it should be easy to find solutions to programming problems that others have already tackled. Imagine being able to type "compute sha256, c++" and seeing relevant code snippets right there. I am not saying this is an easy problem to solve, but I think it's definitely worthwhile one to try. Who knows, may be someone will build an awesome code search engine on top of github.

[1] - https://codereview.chromium.org/261573002/diff/60001/google_...

[2] - https://github.com/blog/1772-diffable-more-customizable-maps

If you use Chrome you can install the Octosplitt[1] extension for side-by-side diffs.

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnkacicafjlllhcedh...

Just to mention, Bitbucket has side-by-side Diffs.

That a person is applying for a programming job is the first, and most important, positive sign of interest in programming. These days, in fact, thanks to the ever increasing emphasis on having a github profile as part of the recruitment process, I view having a github profile as being little different from plugging in the Language Alphabet in the right places on a resume. It's empty filler that may or may not have any use.

You don't "disrupt" something because you don't like it, you disrupt it to make it better.

Every industry that's been disrupted was filled with companies that were coasting or in decline. GitHub has a ways to go before it ends up there.

Remember, GitHub disrupted SourceForge because it wasn't improving. Stack Overflow disrupted Experts Exchange for similar reasons.

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