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jbarnette

93 karma · joined July 20, 2009

Currently taking a break. Reach me at john@jbarnette.com.
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jbarnette··on Scientist: A Ruby library for carefully refactoring critical paths
By the time we extracted Scientist, the code we were refactoring had pretty good test coverage. But even the best test suite is an imperfect model of production. The first section of the README briefly mentions this:

"Let's pretend you're changing the way you handle permissions in a large web app. Tests can help guide your refactoring, but you really want to compare the current and refactored behaviors under load."

jbarnette··on Remembering Evi Nemeth, the “Matriarch of System Administration”
Thanks, Evi. You were kind to me when I was very young and very stupid.
jbarnette··on Kubernetes at GitHub
EY, Rackspace, and then our own metal.
jbarnette··on State of the Octoverse 2013
Pretty much only the early employees remember where that humans.txt is stashed.
jbarnette··on State of the Octoverse 2013
I wouldn't be surprised if a few GitHubbers dropped by Huntsville sometime this summer. Watch the blog.
jbarnette··on Google Analytics for GitHub
We'll see what we can do. ;)
jbarnette··on How GitHub No Longer Works
There is no such thing as a shit task.

Added: That's a little too glib, sorry. Let me try again: From my perspective, if there's something that needs to be done at GitHub there are a few possibilities:

1. It needs to be done and it's getting done,

2. It needs to be done and it's not getting done, or

3. It's bullshit.

Cases of #3 become obvious pretty quickly. The best evidence: Searching for ways to make someone do it because nobody stepped up.

Cases of #2 can happen for a bunch of different reasons, but malice, apathy, laziness, or incompetence are the least likely ones. The most likely: Not enough hours in the day or not enough people with the knowledge necessary to be worried. No matter the reason for #2, someone at GitHub who is worried will generally try to get others to share their priorities, by persuasion, by hiring, or by prototyping.

Or occasionally by just jumping up and down and wailing.

jbarnette··on How GitHub No Longer Works
We use PRP in any situation where someone explicitly takes responsibility for an outcome, no matter whether the outcome is some software or a clean office or an accurate tax return.
jbarnette··on Identicons
If you're running a recent version of GitHub Enterprise, the avatar base URL can be configured today. It's possible to run an internal, secure server that responds to Gravatar's URL scheme.
jbarnette··on More Git and GitHub Secrets
We released task lists earlier this year: https://github.com/blog/1375-task-lists-in-gfm-issues-pulls-...
jbarnette··on GitHub's on your phone
Yup, we're focusing on the pages most likely to be clicked through on mobile first.
jbarnette··on Free private Github repos for students and edu people
Have you asked us? support@github are real humans, I promise.
jbarnette··on Free private Github repos for students and edu people
I'm really sorry to hear that. I work at GitHub, so if you want to talk more about your experience please drop me a line. It's this username at that domain. Or hit up any other GitHubbers in this thread: We wouldn't be hanging around if we didn't want to hear from you.
jbarnette··on Github turns five
NilClass.
jbarnette··on Github turns five
It's in the early 7000's.
jbarnette··on STL File Viewing
We grabbed a 3D printer for the office a while ago.
jbarnette··on Introducing Boxen
Drift after installation and incremental updates were more of a problem for us than initial installs.
jbarnette··on Introducing Boxen
We've opened up #boxen on freenode for questions and discussion. We'll idle there whenever we can.
jbarnette··on Ruby inline assembler
My favorite thing about this library is that it parses the NASM manual: https://github.com/seattlerb/wilson/blob/master/lib/wilson.r...
jbarnette··on Introducing Contributions
Yep, we don't count contributions until they hit a repository's default or gh-pages branch.
jbarnette··on GitHub now has Issue Attachments
We don't have roadmaps or a prioritized backlog, so we weren't exactly "waiting" to implement this. Someone got fed up with the image workflow, figured out a solution, grabbed some other people to help, and shipped it.
jbarnette··on GitHub now has Issue Attachments
Yup, images only.
jbarnette··on The GitHub hiring experience
There are a fair amount of us > 35 folks at GitHub.
jbarnette··on What's it like to work at GitHub?
GitHub has been organized this way since it was in a pre-revenue state.
jbarnette··on Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21
We started doing this in Seattle last year with some success (http://startupsanonymous.com). I've kept it dormant during a busy move to New Orleans, but if anybody's interested in working together to get it started again I'm up for it. There's a need.
jbarnette··on ROC, a Redis Object Collection for Ruby
https://github.com/nateware/redis-objects is clean, mature, and has worked very well for us in several production systems. What makes ROC better?
jbarnette··on Artsicle lets you rent artworks before you buy them.
Compare: http://www.turningart.com
jbarnette··on Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer
I don't get the impression that many of the commenters here are spending a lot of time trying to hire good people right now. I am, and I'd be grateful to receive an email like this.

I wouldn't like it, but honest, personal feedback on an interview process is hard to find.

jbarnette··on Review My Startup: ZestyLogos
There are some good sample logos on the page, but the overall design reads more as a vanity site/portfolio than as a marketing page.

Make every element on the page justify its presence. "Hey, coffee-stained TODO list in the top right corner, why do you exist? How are you helping me sell logos?"

Consider finding someone to do a thorough edit of your marketing copy. Lots of good ideas in there, but it's uneven.

jbarnette··on ARel 2.0: Active Record Performance in Rails 3.0.2
Aaron's real blog: http://tenderlovemaking.com
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