
GitHub isn't fun anymore - MH15
https://jaredpalmer.com/github-isnt-fun-anymore
======
ChrisMarshallNY
I’ve never considered GitHub to be “fun.” It’s a great _tool_ , though.

Most of my GH interaction is through my desktop system, not a browser (pushing
and pulling checkouts).

I’ve been using some form of source control for nearly 30 years (since
Projector, in the 1990s). It’s a tool. A very, very important tool.

I appreciate many of the “glossy” features of GH, like hero images and GH
Pages, but this shows how “out of touch” I must be, because I have never
considered it to be a social venue or competitive arena.

It’s just a place I keep my code. I’m quite grateful for it.

~~~
lqet
Tangential: what is up with this inflationary expectation that everything
should be "fun" and "exciting" and "thrilling"? I feel like western society as
a whole is thinking more and more in terms of a six year old. For adults,
there lies incredible satisfaction in mastering _any_ but the most
exploitative professions or jobs and fulfilling them dutifully, even if they
are be no means "fun".

~~~
kirse
_what is up with this inflationary expectation that everything should be "fun"
and "exciting" and "thrilling"_

A couple years ago I dubbed this trend "Flanders Computing" [1]. I haven't
really given much thought about its origins, but it's probably got to do with
the increasing demand for happiness that we Americans hold dear.

Collectively I think it's entered the American psyche that the answer to
happiness is to avoid anything that makes us anxious or uncomfortable, which
results in that toddler-level approach in many things. i.e. Ban things labeled
"toxic", ban the boo-boos, keep everyone safe with happy feelings in this
space only. But admittedly my thoughts are incomplete.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13353106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13353106)

~~~
tekromancr
> Ban things labeled "toxic", ban the boo-boos, keep everyone safe with happy
> feelings in this space only. But admittedly my thoughts are incomplete.

I think your thoughts are incomplete. What they are missing is the knowledge
of and empathy for people who are actually harmed by these behaviors.

~~~
coldtea
> _What they are missing is the knowledge of and empathy for people who are
> actually harmed by these behaviors._

Don't worry, most people asking for such bans don't have any real empathy for
people who are actually harmed by these behaviors either.

And inversely, most people who are actually harmed, don't care for such bans,
they prefer substantive and inherent (felt and voluntary) changes, not bans.

------
root_axis
Hard pass on the suggestion to add more social network features. Such features
are only conducive to drama and anxiety, we need less of that not more.

~~~
nikanj
Social network features are such a 2015 me-too fad feature anyway. What they
should add is AI, or maybe blockchain.

~~~
tzs
Before adding the newest fad features, maybe the should go back and add old
fads that they missed.

One big fad from 50+ years ago that I'd welcome is folders. I don't want to
just have all my repositories appear in a flat list ordered by time since last
update. I want to make folders so I can organize repositories by topic--just
like I have my repositories organized in my computer.

~~~
kerng
The modern version is tags, but they lack good sorting/viewing for tags

~~~
raxxorrax
Not wanting to start a discussion about graphs vs trees for organizing, but in
my opinion simple folders are great to fulfill basic needs. I cannot imagine a
book having no table of contents and just a list of tags with numbers
indicating relevant page numbers.

That is just dumbing yourself down in favor of machine classification or
search algorithms while a simple solution exists for this problem for higher
order classification and context, which tags alone fail to provide, even with
sorting.

~~~
rytis
Depends on a book type I suppose. Most have "index" section, which is just a
list of tags. In recipe books I find it more useful than ToC actually.

~~~
l72
I think it depends on your goal. If I want to browse new chicken recipes, I am
going to open the table of contents, find the section on poultry and start
flipping through recipes. On the other hand, if I want to cook a chicken
curry, I am going to go to the index and look up curry, then find the relevant
page.

Folders are great for when you don't know what you want and just want to
browse or explore based on broad topics. Tags/indexes are better when you know
basically what you want, and you just need a way to find it or items similar
to it.

------
frankcaron
Imo, Github has only been moving further in the right direction lately — and
more social features ain't it, chief.

The better value proposition lift from giving folks and teams more free
private repos was huge, and the increasingly-prominent integration of Github
into enterprise tools is facilitating (if not helping to force) the
modernization of enterprise dev outside the software industry.

I've never been a bigger fan of Github, personally. Microsoft seems to be
doing the same with Github that it did with Minecraft: amplifying what it does
well, fixing what it didn't, and making it more accessible to more folks the
way they want to consume it — all while not compromising what made it great to
begin with.

~~~
_fat_santa
Second this. With GH now letting you create Organizations with private
repositories, it's starting to transform how I store core on GH.

All of my "big" projects on GH have more than one repo, usually 2-5 depending
on what all work needs to be done. Before GH allowed you to create private
repos in orgs for free I had hundreds of repositories and had to name them
like projectname-website. Now I create orgs for my biggest projects so all my
repos are starting to look more like projectname/website instead.

I'll admit, very small change but helps me keep my Github organized.

\---

Overall Github has gotten only more and more important in my workflow. I find
it amazing that this site went from "cool tool" back in my college years to "I
literally cannot live without this tool" now.

~~~
awirth
>With GH now letting you create Organizations with private repositories

I thought this was always the point of Organizations..?

~~~
judge2020
Previously, organizations only allowed creating public repositories, so they
were limited to open source projects unless you paid $9/user/month. Now they
enable free private repo creation for organizations, although many "business"
features like protected branches still require the Team plan (now
$4/user/month) [https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing).

------
tjpnz
I've sworn off Github for my own toy projects. The code I write off the clock
is a form of escapism, I don't want to run the risk of having my repos nuked
from orbit for any inadvertent profanity, nor do I want to triage issues from
people taking issue with how I've named things, or forcing me to adopt an
ultimately meaningless boilerplate CoC. I don't want to have to write a novel
on why I'm not a racist or a fascist like Antirez recently had to.

I'm not implying that I would face all of these issues on Github currently.
But I don't want to run the risk of being in that position and getting into a
shouting match with someone - and then having to deal with all of the
consequences.

~~~
xwdv
The master and slave debate was dumb, and reflects a creeping of political
correctness into coding and software over the years that I do not look forward
to. React’s keywords have been similarly attacked for promoting a “bro”
culture with use of words like props or mount. And man-in-the-middle attacks
are increasingly being described as person-in-the-middle, at the expense of
alliteration. So many other examples out there.

~~~
JoBrad
This is a bit longer than I intended, but is my point of view, and not
intended to dismiss what you’re saying at all.

I think it’s easy to dismiss conversations like master/slave
whitelist/blacklist as overly PC or childish. I certainly don’t appreciate the
overly-preachy feeling I sometimes get from people pushing their point of
view. And my nature is to find pleasure in giving The Man the proverbial
finger. The self righteousness can be intentional on their part, of course,
but many times it’s not. I honestly get the similar feelings about the diet-
of-the-year fad, too. I have been very lucky in life so far, in that I haven’t
struggled with weight or the negative impacts of racism. But I’m discovering
that language is an incredibly powerful tool for changing deeply-rooted
habits, like which foods you find comfort in, or your default reaction to
conflict. When I’ve become an unwilling participant in these changes, I have
to ask myself: what is the balance of pros/cons for me and for others? Also,
what is my net influence on others who are attempting to do good (no matter my
opinion on its effectiveness)? I don’t think I’ve ever changed the default
branch for any GitHub repo I’ve worked with. It should theoretically cause no
issues at all, I suppose, but I can’t state that with certainty. So there’s a
bit of a challenge that I’ll actually enjoy. And I’m not aware of any culture
or richness of vocabulary that depends on the dynamic of this set of
nomenclature. Besides, I still see words like “serf” and “lord” on a semi-
regular basis despite it’s remove from our lifestyles, so these words aren’t
disappearing any time soon. On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that racism
has scarred our society very deeply. I remember being shocked when my wife
told me how young age was when someone first attempted to take advantage of
her for sex. I recently felt the same level of shock when my friend told me
that she gets called the n word multiple times every day. If our vocabulary
can change our mindset, then maybe removing the master/slave dynamic can be a
net positive, like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions.
We end up turning to other defaults instead of the old ones. Maybe we end up
no better off, and decide to change again. Who knows? But personally I don’t
see a lot of downside in the attempt to better our world.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
My initial thoughts on the matter were similar to yours. Why not perform a
simple search and replace on the source code for a contentious word? Or click
a few buttons to change the default branch?

The problem is in the unintended consequences. Once we started accommodating
requests to change potentially-problematic words at my last company, those
words went from "possibly problematic to someone" to "officially confirmed as
offensive by company policy".

From that point forward, many people assumed that anyone accidentally using
those words had ill intent. This peaked when an interviewer chastised a
candidate for referring to the "master branch" during an interview. We also
had someone try to cause problems because our Linux systems had "man pages",
which they believed was proof that Linux distributions were sexist. It's one
thing to search/replace your documentation for a specific word, but just wait
until you have a team of people brainstorming complex plans to remove "man
pages" from every Linux PC and server in the company.

Ironically, once we stopped making company-endorsed efforts to navigate
problematic vocabulary, the number of people offended or insulted started to
decline. The policies had the opposite of the intended effect.

It's one thing to make a personal effort to use a less contentious vocabulary.
I have no problem with that, nor should anyone else. However, the problems
come when using industry-standard vocabulary is assumed to have ill intent. No
one wants to operate in an environment where they can be declared to be
racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced for using a basic technology term
without ill intent.

~~~
downerending
> people assumed that anyone accidentally using those words had ill intent

That's becoming a thing at my current job. I'm just accepting that I will
eventually slip (or even just fail to keep up with the trendy list of bad
words) and get fired.

Guess it's better than being eaten by a bear.

------
cmdshiftf4
>I’d also be interested to see more social network-like features on GitHub.I
wouldn’t be opposed to a GitHub NewsFeed

This would genuinely make me migrate off github permanently, both for personal
projects and work.

>project chat

IRC/Slack/Discord already exist

>or even DMs

A new avenue for recruiter spam? No thank you.

~~~
save_ferris
Agreed. HN and reddit are way better at helping me find repos that are
relevant to my skill set and interest. It’s like the author doesn’t even try
to utilize these other social spaces that have already largely solved this
problem.

Sometimes I come across people whose idea of a perfect world is an app that
knows exactly what to show them and when without any curiosity or effort, and
it blows my mind. That is my hell.

~~~
pydry
I find HN and Reddit largely useless for finding new and interesting code.

The Reddit python subreddit is truly awful - it's just beginners sharing their
first projects.

Whereas HN is largely biased to what's extremely popular and/or "cool".

~~~
save_ferris
Have you tried r/coolgithubprojects? There are a ton of great projects in that
sub and you can filter by language, and they’re not all trendy.

~~~
pydry
I have. I like it but it's a shame it's not a bit more active.

------
floatingatoll
GitHub's time as the "cool" option has ended. It has matured and moved beyond
the early adopter community, and presence on it is no longer a social signal
of any significant relevance.

I use GitHub to get work done, either on my projects or on others. I do not
expect GitHub to innately provide me a degree of fun. That's the job of the
projects, not of GitHub itself.

Zoom exited the early adopter phase this past pandemic. It promptly was given
significant attention, reasons were found to declare it "uncool", and Jitsi
was elevated as the next "cool" replacement.

This article confirms that GitHub is now exiting the early adopter phase.
Significant attention is being paid to it, reasons are being found to declare
it "uncool" — _but_ , no replacement has yet been elevated as the next "cool"
replacement for it.

What will GitHub's replacement "cool" service be?

~~~
rapnie
> What will GitHub's replacement "cool" service be?

Hopefully this will be ForgeFed [0] standards support, allowing forges such as
github, github, gitea, sourcehut, notabug, etc. to interoperate via
ActivityPub-based federation.

ForgeFed opens walled gardens and allows anyone to interact with any repo with
a single account regardless on where it resides. It is still in early
development stage, but received funding from NLNet which will be distributed
among contributors working on roadmap items [1]. Additionally feedback is
requested via the Feneas forum [2] so make yourself heard :)

[0] [https://forgefed.peers.community/](https://forgefed.peers.community/)

[1]
[https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed/issues/87](https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed/issues/87)

[2] [https://talk.feneas.org/c/forgefed](https://talk.feneas.org/c/forgefed)

~~~
jtl999
Will have to check this out :)

But is GitHub big enough they can just ignore it and go "bah we're too big now
to care about others"?

~~~
rapnie
Well possible. But probably based on GH API and Actions you can still support
a bunch of federation features.

------
Animats
_I believe the turning point was when they changed how the ranking system on
the Trending page worked._

I had no idea Github had a "trending" mechanism. I just use it as a free place
to store code repositories, of which I have about 20. About the only social
feature of Github I use is "Issues", to report or deal with bugs.

In fact, I rarely visit the site with a browser. Most usage is from "git".
Which is what it's supposed to be for.

~~~
power78
>I had no idea Github had a "trending" mechanism.

Sounds like this article doesn't apply to you then.

>Which is what it's supposed to be for.

That's just your opinion. Clearly people have been using github for
discovering new software and more. I have found plenty of cool projects
through the sites features.

~~~
lucideer
I use Github for discovering new software, and more. And a trending algorithm
is of no use to me. I use search and filter based on practically applicable
keywords and other facets that are relevant to my need at the time.

The author uses the phrase `the new JavaScript “hotness”` in the context of
this somehow being a positive. Engineers going after libraries because of
their "hotness" instead of because of their utility is exactly the problem
with the Javascript (and other "cool" / "trending") ecosystems.

------
atonse
I don't think I've ever used the trending page in my 12 years of using GitHub.

~~~
huhtenberg
Apparently that's where all the fun was. Live and learn.

------
unsigner
This reads like satire on the culture of trend-chasing, framework-of-the-week
young developers that dominate in certain circles. Life imitates The Onion,
Poe's law and all that.

If you're not one of them, and feel alone and outdated - don't. There's enough
graybeards toiling away at the boring software that supports the world,
oblivious of what killed last week's React killer. This too shall pass.

~~~
chiefsucker
It’s really fascinating how humanity can twist almost everything around and
start seeing it from a bad perspective.

Maybe the author is a very engaged developer who already knows a huge part of
the “boring software that supports the world”? Maybe he is so engaged that he
wants to follow new developments in his professional area to get even better?
Maybe he hopes that he will discover new and interesting algorithms that can
help him improve his skills?

I think there is a point that simple algorithms are a better user interface,
because of their predictability (although they show their flaws, like he
specifically mentions with JS). Just try to remember how much discussion there
was about Twitter’s feed and their move away from a classic timeline. They
still haven’t abandoned the latter one.

But who knows in the end? Maybe your comment was just an attempt of satire a
la The Onion? Personally I try not to prematurely judge and stay positive. To
each his own I guess.

~~~
ashtonkem
I see it exactly as the opposite. Github is a boring and effective tool for
professionals, and the author has twisted it around to be a bad thing since
it’s not “fun”.

------
peteforde
I had no idea that GitHub was supposed to (or trying to be) fun.

If you're going to non-curated "trending" feeds looking for things that are
already popular to pay attention to, you're not only wasting your finite free
time but you're training yourself to be a follower.

Stop this nonsense immediately. Use your talents and build something great. If
you never check the "trending" page on GitHub again, you will have a better
life.

~~~
pickpuck
The point of the “trending” page wasn’t that it always showed you React. It
showed you tiny repositories that had exploded in popularity that day.

~~~
peteforde
So what? Why would you drop what you're doing to check out something you don't
need to know exists?

I'm not trying to be an asshole: focus is both incredibly hard and the only
way to build great things.

There are a countless number of things you're better off doing than checking
out new random shit. Those people have already had their success. What are you
bringing?

~~~
malwrar
I haven’t participated in this trend-hunting behavior the author describes,
but it sounds like it has the main appeal of HN—see new ideas that other
people with a similar mindset are talking about. There’s educational and
entertainment value to that, and while you’re right time is better spent
grinding on projects it certainly sounds appealing to have a window into stuff
other people are working on that is also mildly curated.

~~~
peteforde
Fair enough. I'll accept this. :)

------
BiteCode_dev
Good, let the people using github for fun leave.

Github is not meant to be fun, it's meant to be like a pen.

A good pen can be enjoyable. Beautiful. You can feel attachement to it.

But it is not built to be played with. By that I mean it's not its primary
function, even if a creative or bored mind can use it for that.

A good pen fullfills its intended purpose when it disapears from your mind
while you use it, yielding to the writting that should be the center of your
attention.

I don't think about github when I code. I just use it.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
A lot of people (who may not even be professional programmers) are using
GitHub for their hobby, i.e. "for fun". I don't think this is an invalid use
case.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
If you write for your hobby, the writing is your hobby, not the pen.

Nobody said, "I can't wait to click on githubs buttons!"

But they might have said, "I can't wait to make this code available".

~~~
farazzz
Sure, but Github is not only the pen, but also the publisher. People create
things for others to use, not to be ignored

------
Androider
Huh, TIL that GitHub has a trending page. I have a few projects with a few
thousand stars, but have literally never seen this thing.

The choices on the trending page do seem weird, and kind of useless.

~~~
tcbasche
I remember seeing all the spammy garbage during Hacktoberfest, but apart from
that it's a pretty random selection of repositories

------
nirui
Not touching that "Zero star hotness" problem, but

> ... lot project discovery has moved to other platforms, and more
> specifically, to Twitter. This isn’t good for the community.

Let me bring out my 2 points here:

#1: Hey, please ask your inner self why would you ever want to put out your
own free labor out on the Internet in the first place? For common good? World
peace?

I bet most people will answer: Be cool, be known, receive attention etc. Those
GitHub stars&fork you've received will help you in your next job hunt, it will
help you when you trying to introduce yourself to the other devs, it will help
you to expand your people network. In short, those free labor generates
something _good_ for you.

But GitHub has it's own limits. On GitHub, your projects are discovered/used
by other devs, a bubbles of it's own kind. Further, those devs might not even
want to give you stars because they're above your level and/or found your
project uninteresting to them.

Social medias generate those "good"s better than GitHub simply because it got
wider range of people, and greater chance to found somebody who is interested
to try out your project.

#2 and more important: The GitHub Trending page itself is really poor when it
comes to discover new things.

Just think: What's on that page? "Most stared today" list. Well yeah, then
where are those stars came from? Right?

It's a "Trending" page, that's it. Not a "Hey, checkout these exciting
repositories recommended just for you" page and certainly not "Hey, come here
and checkout my new repo which currently got zero star but it's really cool"
page.

I personally found ProductHunt, Hacker News and Reddit is a better source if I
do want to "Discover" something new. Which I guess is why people are posting
their projects there (as well as on Twitter and Facebook and other platforms).

------
xgenecloud
>> No offense to Stripe, but the notion that stripe-samples/subscriptions,
which has 13 total stars with exactly zero new stars today is the new
JavaScript “hotness” is a joke. This is totally useless to everyone.

THIS.

The new algorithm is not only horrendous but SUPER FLAWED!

Here is what happened.

After receiving 900+ stars within a week of launch - we never make it to
'Trending' weekly or monthly!! We were their trending for 3 days. Then all of
a sudden we are gone. The rest of the repos which were trending with us with
as little as 50 stars are in weekly/monthly trending!!!

Can you please help explain this @Github ?

When contacted Github support about this flaw - the reply was short (they dont
wanna reveal their buggy algorithm! I was asking to look at the problem not to
defend their solution)

Stars not only tell how cool a open source project is but also makes the new
open source developers produce valuable work without next to nothing in
return.

Just taking out this small dopamine rush translates to this - a good company
(Github) was acquired by an old-enterprise.

~~~
austincheney
> Stars not only tell how cool a open source project is but also makes the new
> open source developers produce valuable work without next to nothing in
> return.

Stars aren’t payment. If that is the primary currency for your development I
am curious what happens when there are no new stars? Do you kill the repo?

~~~
xgenecloud
Stars are a way to bookmark and discover repos in the open source world. No
stars doesn't mean no development - I am not denying that and appreciate your
concern on how much vanity is in it. (I guess it is better than vanity of
likes for a photo on instagram).

------
duxup
For me stars on GitHub were me sort of bookmarking things I didn't use and....
probably wouldn't look at ever again?

Thus I always felt a little weird about the hype around the number of stars.

~~~
kstenerud
For me, stars are a rough measure of traction. If I can get a project above
1000 or so, my project begins to take on a life of its own, and I can
concentrate less on marketing and awareness.

~~~
hobofan
I would say that stars are mostly a measure of interest/coolness. The
difference to actual people using it can be absurd. The biggest project I
maintained had 5k+ stars (which it got by landing on the HN frontpage a few
times), but the actual amount of people that tried to use it is in the 10-20
range. On the flipside one of my other projects has a lot more users than it
has stars.

With all that, stars have basically lost all meaning to me if I'm looking at
it as a project outsider, and only have limited meaning as a maintainer.

------
0xy
LinkedIn features on Github? Sounds awful. Imagine having to dodge Microsoft's
typical dodgy dark patterns to access repositories. LinkedIn is one of the
worst social networks, and employs dark patterns that not even Facebook has
adopted.

~~~
durnygbur
I think it's a matter of time as both are owned by MS. Long term the middle
management and profits simply prevail in large corporate decision chains.

It just make sense for them to integrate GitHub with LinkedIn somehow.

------
jonny383
GitHub has slowly phased away from being a website about the code, to being a
website about people. Yes, people are an aspect of the code, however the site
is no longer focusing solely on collaboration tools for working with code.

Author is correct, the "trending" now rendered on GitHub is a joke.

But what is worse is the "Explore" screen they put in. All I get given is a
bunch of useless crap in a column that is 580 pixels wide. Half of the
projects that appear in here are in chinese so I can't understand anything
about them except the project title. The entire UX of this screen feels like a
social network.

Bonus points: Another, stupid, pointless feature they added a while back:
"[emoji] Set status".

------
alessivs
> (re: project discovery) We went from a flawed meritocracy to a social
> network that promotes chaos, tribalism, and idea bubbles.

This works well in two senses:

1\. We went from a flawed meritocracy (GitHub) to a social network that
promotes chaos, tribalism, and idea bubbles (Twitter).

2\. GitHub went from a flawed meritocracy to a social network that promotes
chaos, tribalism, and idea bubbles (CoCs, them-vs-us narratives, a priori
victimization, non-universal notions of "inclusiveness", "master branches").

~~~
vore
How can something a meritocracy if it's flawed? Either you can actually assess
something on its merits or you can't, and if you can't, then you can't really
call it a meritocracy, can you?

~~~
sanxiyn
Correlation is not zero or one, it is continuous. Correlation between metric
and merit measures how flawed the meritocracy is.

------
imagetic
Communication of the open source community feels like it's down. Social media
eventually killed forums and chat rooms. Social media if anything, made
learning and discovering a more isolated experience. RSS isn't what it used to
be either, that compounded with blog posts being down, and the sheer volume of
bad tutorials, bad code, and bad ideas, it's hard to sift through it all and
discover things of value.

Early Twitter were the golden years in my eyes. You could ask a question or
post an idea and get responses from random developers. Now it's just echoes
into the ether.

------
geofft
This complaint makes no sense. (It may still be _true_ \- fun is subjective -
but the article offers an objective argument for it that doesn't hold up.)

> _The Trending page used to be a straight-up list of the projects with the
> most new stars in the last 24 hours across the whole site (and by
> language)._

...

> _In this era of Developer Relations, VC-backed open source, and the endless
> developer-content-bullshit machine, the old Trending page was one of the few
> places left on the web where it seemed like the best ideas still won._

I've been seeing corporate projects beg for stars (from either employees or
users) for almost a decade now. Meanwhile, I have never asked for stars on my
personal repos and I think most people don't. If you don't like companies
putting their finger on the scale, stars are the absolute last thing to
measure!

> _The worst side effect of the new Trending page is that a lot project
> discovery has moved to other platforms, and more specifically, to Twitter.
> This isn’t good for the community. We went from a flawed meritocracy ...
> good ideas and good projects are getting lost, especially from newcomers._

How, exactly, are newcomers supposed to get stars on their projects without a
following?

------
bryanrasmussen
Probably it's because of not actually caring that much for things that are fun
anyway, but why would I want my version control system to be fun?

Does this guy complain that his hammer fails to entertain him when pounding
nails?

~~~
fredoliveira
> my version control system

You're very clearly confusing the version control system git with the platform
for code collaboration github.

The first doesn't have to be fun (and I'd argue shouldn't be fun). The latter,
however, can be (maybe even should be). OP can see fun in exploring new
technologies, new solutions to problems, new libraries to use - and who are we
to judge that? The trending page _was_ an interesting way to see what was
cropping up around the platform. I didn't check it often, but I did check it
from time to time.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
>You're very clearly confusing the version control system git with the
platform for code collaboration github.

sorry for expressing myself badly, but I do realize they are different things
as I use bitbucket and gitlab as well.

that said I use them all as dumb, quick views for the current state of the
project, with a couple of on/off switches to automate common tasks in a git
project. I would like to keep my informational panels as low distraction as
possible, and fun, at least as it is stereotyped in popular culture through
the ages, tends to be distracting.

------
fhennig
Microsoft says they love open source right? They could just provide an easy
API for the data that underlies the trending page, and there could be multiple
spin-off projects that rank projects differently.

Same for many of the other suggested features. News feed for example.

In computers, we can make everything interact with everything, if we wanted
to.

I also don't _want_ to be at the mercy of MS implementing or removing
something. It would be much better if they had many open APIs to integrate
with.

------
vsroy
I see a lot of disagreement with this post but I think it makes good points.

It's hard for small developers who make useful things to get noticed on
GitHub. The only hope is to get retweeted by some established user. This seems
silly, we need better ways of making sure people can find/discover good
software.

~~~
nexuist
The problem is that open source software is inherently trust-driven. I
wouldn't blindly execute any random code on my machine, but I execute code
from people or companies I trust all the time. Of course I could review the
whole repo, but that always takes time (and even then you're not guaranteed to
not be hit by an intentional/unintentional vulnerability), and it comes down
to "well, would me spending time vetting this be more valuable than just
finding a more popular, more trusted alternative?"

So it's hard to spotlight anonymous devs on their own, because you can't
establish trust with someone who isn't known for anything yet.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Seems like the openness of software is orthogonal to trust. Would you no
longer trust an app only because its license became Open?

Closed source seems to require more trust to me.

I think trust is very difficult to manage and do some checking of owners of
PPAs before using them -- containerisation can help, but doesn't prevent
information gathering and other trust-breaking activities (backdoors, etc.).

------
dhbradshaw
I think, given his content, that this comment is overly broad. Instead, it
should probably say that the Github trending page isn't fun any more.

And he gives a nice and precise reason for this: the Github trending page used
to have all the qualities of a game. There were ranked participants and there
was a clear, known score. If you wanted to do well in the game, then you knew
exactly what you had to do. As a bonus, the rules happened to be such that the
ranked results were actually interesting.

Now the trending page has an opaque score. Opaque scores and rules almost
never make for a fun game.

Perhaps the results are interesting. If so, how do we know that? It's hard to
judge whether or not they are because we don't know the scoring mechanism. So
the page loses not only its fun but its meaning as well.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I am happy with GitHub just being a repository for code. For cool project
discovery I generally use HN or reddit. My stars mostly acts as bookmarks for
projects I found interesting at some time in the past.

I want a reliable, boring GitHub. I will look somewhere else for fun.

~~~
kyriakos
/r/coolgithubprojects has some interesting links

------
boredpudding
Ending a blog post with "What do you think?" but not having any comment
option. While the post wants more social features on another website.

------
craigds
Github's a work tool, not somewhere you go to have fun.

This is a weird article because its main point is about the 'Trending page',
which is something I've never heard of in the last 10 years of using github
heavily.

I'm _vaguely_ aware there are some social features of github (you can
apparently star repos, for instance) but I'd assume hardly anyone uses that
stuff...

~~~
petepete
The beauty of Github is that it does a really good job of both.

Yes, we use it for work and it's excellent, but there are loads of fun,
throwaway, educational, ridiculous and interesting projects on there.

The trending page was great because it offered a glimpse of what's out there
and what people are talking about. If you don't care, that's fine - it won't
ever affect you. I find it interesting for the same reasons I find HN
interesting.

Github has had social features for a decade or more; I've been able to follow
colleagues and friends, react to issues and conversations with emojis and
upload photos of my dog. What else do I need? What does Facebook have that
Github doesn't in this regard?

------
einpoklum
> The worst side effect of the new Trending page is that a > lot project
> discovery has moved to ... Twitter.

Huh? No. I mean, I don't know what JS people do with their lives; I'm a C++
and CUDA guy (even though I dabble in some JS), and none of my acquaintances
discovers projects through Twitter.

GitHub has this side-bar with projects I might find interesting and it often
recommends ones that I do.

Regardless - I would move away from GitHub to someplace else if the exposure
wasn't so critical. I would really like a cross-site federation mechanism
which would let us try other places.

------
radicalriddler
I stronly agree with the trending part. I used to browse it regularly to find
cool projects, that may have been on HN or Product Hunt or something that
week, but now, most of it is Chinese projects that are meaningless to me or
large businesses latest nothing github project they made.

~~~
sanxiyn
Chinese projects are presumably meaningful to people who can read Chinese,
although it is meaningless to you. You are free to learn Chinese. It is a
great skill to have.

If more people who can read Chinese are using GitHub, why is it a wrong choice
for GitHub to surface Chinese projects in the trending page? I detect the
racist attitude here.

Yes, it is a bad recommendation, but the trending page is not personalized.
GitHub does provide personalized pages for discovery. Do you get Chinese
projects there too? That would be a bug worth fixing. But it is not a bug to
have Chinese projects in the trending page. It is expected feature.

~~~
Recursing
It would be a nice feature for non Chinese-speaking users to be able to filter
by language

And actually it seems that Github just implemented this
[https://github.com/trending](https://github.com/trending)

~~~
sanxiyn
Huh, thanks for noticing ("Spoken Language" filter) and letting us know.
That's great.

------
irjustin
The OP is hitting at a long lived really difficult problem especially for a
place like GitHub - how do you display what people care about? -
recommendation engine

Most stars in 24 hours? That gets the same group of 0.1% consistently at the
top leading to a stale page.

So Github tried to improve its 'signaling' of what's interesting yet new so
you can keep coming back to the trending page?

Is it stars the overall account crossed w/ new? Number of issues opened in 24
hours? Forks?

~~~
ashtonkem
You’re assuming that Github needs to provide a means for recommendations like
a typical social network when I doubt it does.

I return to github repeatedly to interact with repos I’ve already found based
on professional need. I neither want Github to recommend content to me, nor do
I need it to; I regularly use services outside of GitHub to find content on it
that’s relevant to my needs.

Github is a tool, not a social network. I don’t want them to maximize for
“engagement”; I want them to fill my professional requirements and charge me a
fee for their services.

------
axegon_
I'll be honest I scroll through the trending page once a day. I am not sure
about javascript because I couldn't care less about it, but I have to admit
for many other languages, I do end up wondering how some projects get to
trending...

------
skohan
I could not identify with this article less. The whole concept of needing a
"scoreboard" for open source software at all makes it seem like things have
gone very wrong. I write software because I want to manifest real-world value,
or at the very least to do something interesting. All the noise and clout
chasing just makes it harder to find the quality tools which will actually
help me do that.

------
jdsully
A major reason open source projects use GitHub is the social network features.
It really helps you build traction and get noticed. Regardless of what you may
think of it the trending page does indeed drive further traffic which drives
adoption.

Otherwise we'd all still be on SourceForge or migrate to something more OSS
pure like Gitlab.

~~~
young_unixer
We don't all migrate to gitlab mainly because Github's UI is better and
because of network effects. Nothing to do with social features.

~~~
jdsully
The network effects come from the social features. That was the main
innovation over source forge (aside from git support itself).

------
nikivi
One thing I'd love to see is a flag in GitHub so the news feed won't be filled
with repos that I have already starred (so you only get to see new things).
This is especially useful as I have starred over 13,000 repos so most repos I
will see are starred already.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev?tab=stars](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev?tab=stars)

And before anyone asks 'why star so many repos..', I do it for super fast
access of repos I am fond of with [https://github.com/lox/alfred-github-
jump](https://github.com/lox/alfred-github-jump)

Plus you can sort them nicely into categories later.
([https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/github-
stars](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/github-stars))

------
tcbasche
cripes. It's a code repository, it doesn't have to be fun.

The reasoning in this blog post is why the web is full of anxiety-inducing
anxiety

------
codetiger
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Until I read your post, I didn't realise
Github changed the algorithm behind the page. Until last year, I hit the
treading page at least 5 times a day whenever, I got a short break at work.
This year, I don't know exactly when, but I lost interest in the page and
couldn't go back, no matter how many times I tried. At first I thought it was
only me, very much like how you mentioned.

My opinion: Earlier, we had small problems in the page. Like 5 out of 25 in
the list looked useless or wrongly listed. However now, more than half of the
list looks wrongly listed and not interesting for me.

------
michaelterryio
I used to use the elixir trending page to learn about new popular elixir
libraries. It had twice as many repos as it has now. Now it’s garbage. I
complained to GitHub when it happened. It’s purely worse.

~~~
ashtonkem
I’ve always looked to $LANG community specific websites for suggestions on new
and exciting libraries for $LANG. Such federated discovery is much better
positioned to handle the needs and quirks for each community.

------
efiecho
Please don't ruin something that works fine by adding unnecessary crap. The
only thing Microsoft has to do, is to take a good look at GitLab so they know
what they absolutely NOT should do.

~~~
btasovac
Hey efiecho, Community Advocate from GitLab here! I'm sorry to hear that you
are not a fan of our actions and/or decisions.

Can you please dive into specifics a little bit and explain what parts of
GitLab could be improved and what are some high-level things that you don't
particularly like?

~~~
efiecho
I should probably have been more specific in my critique, as it sounds like I
think GitLab has major problems. It's just regarding the web interface.

On every other Git repository manager, we can browse source code, view replies
to both issues and merge requests without Javascript enabled. But not on
GitLab. I don't expect anything advanced to work without Javascript, but these
simple operations definitely should and I think it's very bad design to have
this requirement. The result of this Javascript overuse is that GitLab is both
slower and a bigger pain to use than the alternatives. Use Javascript in small
amounts were it make sense for functionality, not just for showing text,
pictures or other simple things.

There, my two cents. So, what I meant was that Microsoft should look at GitLab
and NOT copy the web interface. GitHub has a nice web interface, with
Javascript in acceptable amounts and where it make sense, even the language
details bar works without.

------
danso
The author wrote a whole blog post based on 1 example of 1 snapshot – the top
result for the snapshot is indeed from the `stripe-samples` org, but the other
4 examples visible in the author's screenshot – cocos-creator, puppeteer,
Fugiman, uxsolutions – are _not_ orgs run by major tech companies? And I'm an
avid Github user but I've never read much about how the Trending page works,
so I would've appreciated the author linking to even _any_ page talking about
its past algorithm, or its alleged recent change. Instead the entire post is
just rambling by what the author seems to think is happening.

And, IMHO, the author seems to be naive that the past system – "most new stars
in the last 24 hours across the whole site" – resembled some sort of objective
meritocracy, when such a metric could be trivially manipulated, _especially_
by established tech companies.

Looking at the trending page just now [0] for Javascript, I don't see a repo
owned by a big company in the top 5. freecodeCamp/freeCodeCamp is #6 and
facebook/react is #8.

[0] [http://archive.is/5FbTv](http://archive.is/5FbTv)

------
habosa
GitHub seems somewhat intentionally not built for discovery. Which is fine,
but I'll give some examples anyway:

Here's the organization I manage:
[https://github.com/firebase](https://github.com/firebase)

There is _so little_ customization allowed on that page. It's very hard for me
to tell a curious developer what's new or exciting unless I want to constantly
adjust pinned repos.

Now visit this page on a laptop monitor:
[https://github.com/firebase/firebase-android-
sdk](https://github.com/firebase/firebase-android-sdk)

Notice that you're immediately presented with the folder structure and the
README is "below the fold". So the developer's own words about the project are
hidden unless you scroll for them. A lot of newbies get really thrown by this,
they start clicking blindly into the code without knowing there are
instructions below.

All that said: I love GitHub. I spent 50%+ of my day on GitHub and manage 100+
repos. But it's not all things.

------
AndrewHampton
I never used the old trending page, but it sounds like the Changelog Nightly
newsletter [1] is basically the same thing. It goes out every day at 9PM
Pacific. It has 3 sections:

\- most starred repositories that haven't been in the newsletter before

\- most starred repositories that were created that day

\- most starred repositories

1: [https://changelog.com/nightly](https://changelog.com/nightly)

------
aljgz
For me, the question is not whether or not GH was fun and if I checked
trending before (I did not, I'm the type of person who does not jump into
projects in early stages).

If the trending page has been an essential way for projects to gain traction,
then we all have been benefiting from it. If this change disrupts that flow,
then we should all oppose it, no matter if we used it directly or not.

------
thinkingemote
> I wouldn’t be opposed to ... DMs.

They actually had these!

I used it occasionally. It was useful. They obviously removed it. Imagine
being able to message anyone on the platform about their repo or code. Imagine
it being easy to find how to contact someone. Now you have to rely on the user
adding public contact information on their profile which is a) not required
and b) not validated.

------
firebacon
I also feel like the project recommendations on Github have become really...
stale.

At some point, the sidebar would display a new set of projects almost every
time you hit refresh. Now, there hardly seems to be any rotation at all; I've
been seeing the same projects for weeks. Somebody should check if the cron job
for updating the list has crashed :)

------
ashtonkem
Was github ever fun? It’s a tool, not a toy. I don’t expect my IDE to be fun
either, I expect it to accomplish a task for me.

~~~
nikivi
Why do something especially do something for majority of your life and not
make it fun?

~~~
ashtonkem
I enjoy what I do, I just don’t expect my tools to entertain me. One can enjoy
carpentry without expecting their hammer to be “fun”.

I would strenuously resist any attempt to make any of my tools more fun at the
cost of any ounce of productivity. These tools exist to serve the narrow needs
of professionals, focusing on anything other than utility for the core group
is counter productive.

------
iamaziz
One of my first go-to web pages, when I open a browser, is the
github.com/trending page. I find it fun (in general) to explore and discover
the latest in OOS.

On the contrary to the negative sentiment in the blog, I feel GitHub "now"
made it much easier to find the relevant contents and repos that I actually
care about.

------
Tomte
GitHub was never fun. They don't care about spamming, maybe they even endorse
it.

I'm not active on GitHub. I have an account, sometimes I file a bug or so.

Every now and then I get "invited" to some GitHub project I've never heard of.
One contributor, zero stars, pure spam.

I always block those and report them as spammers.

GitHub, without fail, gets back to me saying that "oh, you can block him".
That's it.

Maybe you could just stop people from spam-inviting hundreds of others? Maybe
you could not allow invitations of people who never interacted with the person
or his repo in any way?

But I hope they at least fixed their also very annoying notification bug where
they sent me a mail that I was mentioned in a commit:

Someone had committed a binary file (image or whatever), and in there was
actually a two byte sequence fitting my GitHub user name (two character name).

That's just idiotic. A few bytes in a binary do not "mention" anyone.

------
_tk_
I would love to see an argument in what way the "old Trending algorithm"
constituted a meritocracy.

------
maremp
The changelog-nightly digest will send you a list of trending repos, if you
care about that.

I used to keep up with the trends, even on the trending page, but it’s often
that a big company will release something and it comes on the top. Stars are
just a vanity metric, it says little about how popular is the project at the
moment, how well it’s maintained, etc.

But GitHub as a company is doing so much great things lately. Actions are a
nice built-in way to skip setting up a CI. And the little things which improve
dealing with PRs, for example, checking the file as reviewed, review
suggestions, multi-line review comments, automatically changing the base if
the base is merged, and the list goes on.

It might not be fun for the trend/hype seeking, but it’s a great experience to
work with it as a VCS tool.

------
wmij
I'm also in the GitHub as a tool vs. social app camp and have rarely if ever
had the inclination to visit the daily trending page (cue Pete Davidson - "my
bad"). One feature I do like though is to see what repositories get starred by
people I follow.

One thing has left me wondering after reading the article, is what the
algorithm has changed to if it used to be just most stars in the given time
period? Does anyone have any insight in how the trending repos are ranked?

For example from the article:

> ... the notion that stripe-samples/subscriptions-use-cases, which has 13
> total stars with exactly zero new stars today is the new JavaScript
> “hotness” is a joke.

I'm left wondering then how did that get to the top? Views? Clones? API
requests? Something else like paid promotion? Or manual curation?

------
fit2rule
I wish I could do all the Github things from the command line somehow - get a
lit of all my starred projects, turn watches on and off, etc.

The whole thing would be so much more useful if it weren't wrapped up in a web
interface, and if I could script my interaction with my repo's better ..

------
lucideer
The javascript ecosystem is great (choice is mostly a good thing) but it has a
really bad rep because of all of this nonsense focus on early-adoption of
"cool new thing". That kind of problem is only exacerbated by `Trending`
features like this. Good riddance.

------
mugsie
I have been on GitHub for years, and had no idea there was a trending page at
all ... but then again I don't tend to "discover" new repos as a hobby.

(There is a separate rant about using github stars as a metric of, well,
anything, but thats a thing for a different day)

------
ShorsHammer
Have barely looked at explore that often, generally has little that interests
me despite being fairly accurate with topics.

Following a range of people and checking the main feed from github.com now and
then has always worked fine. Apart from some coworkers and collaborators the
vast majority is people I've never interacted with, some are wellknown, many
are simply folks I've come across over the years in certain fields of interest
and seem active on GH.

There's a constant stream of interesting repos being worked on or starred with
no real social aspect to it. As a discovery mechanism I enjoy the simplicity
of it.

------
cosmodisk
Github is a bit of a social network for developers, and as such, shows all the
similarities to other platforms: there are superstars, competition to be on
top of some magic list of '10 most beautiful women profiles or 10 most popular
JS projects' and etc. And the more people deviate from development towards
social interactions,the more Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn it becomes. Oh,look,
I have 10 stars on my repo!!! Wait a minute,how come he's got 20??Just look at
the way he named variables..Come on,who can vote for this????

------
shankun
Thanks for the feedback on this. We are rebuilding Explore and improving the
feeds on it soon, and would love to chat with you if you’re interested. Drop
me a line (shankuniyogi at github.com).

------
dave_aiello
GitHub isn't fun or not fun for me because of the presence of a Trending page.

I didn't know about the Trending page, so I never considered using it. For my
personal developer literacy and understanding of the Open Source Community, it
would be great if a global Trending page existed and functioned well.

As an indy developer or a developer who usually works on a very small team,
I'd like to see the Trending concept implemented on an Open Source platform
basis.

For instance, a Trending in Angular page, a Trending in Bootstrap 4? Hell yes.

------
young_unixer
Does anyone other than the author use these features? I didn't even know they
existed.

To me, and I'd guess to most people, Github is just a place to host git
repositories, nothing else.

------
bhupesh
I occasionally use the Trending page, but I agree with the OP on projects
getting attraction because someone who has 12k followers on twitter shared a
static page website.

------
saadalem
Here are four ideas for what a next generation Github might look like, ready
for the next billion programmers:

1\. Simplify the Git interface to optimize for daily workflows

2\. Assume all code is online, all the time

3\. Invest in Github’s people network

4\. Invest in Github’s code network

What does the toolchain for the next billion programmers look like? I’ve
written the above as if I were Github, but I think there’s a fair chance
they’ll miss out on a lot of this. And that might just be an opportunity for
you.

(from Sam Gerstenzang)

------
sfgweilr4f
I don't understand this post. Why would I care where my project's ranking is?
Its already a useful project to me and others.

Is there some prize I'm not aware of?

------
yunusabd
This [1] was posted here some time ago. It's been pretty useful for me for
discovering projects, and it seems to be good at bringing actually trending
projects to the top. E.g. at the beginning of the covid situation, you could
see a bunch of dashboards, news trackers, or scripts to buy face masks etc. at
the top.

[1] [https://trends.now.sh/](https://trends.now.sh/)

------
romaniitedomum
Every day now I see one, a comment, a blog post, something that reminds me of
the words of Charles Babbage:

> I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could
> provoke such a question.

Babbage was talking specifically about Members of Parliament asking him
whether putting wrong figures into his machine would result in the correct
answers, but I find the remark generally applicable to so much more.

~~~
ashtonkem
That quote fits perfectly for these situations where I find a suggestion so
flappergastingly silly that I wonder if the author and I have experienced the
same reality.

------
keyle
I'm not sure I can link the title to the body of this post.

What does the trending section have to do with taking the "fun" out of
maintaining code?

------
moltar
I’ve been using GH for over a about a decade. I didn’t even know that trending
feature existed.

Maybe the author is evaluating the tool by a wrong metric?

------
stblack
A major regression in Github is in Notifications, which have a new interface.

I follow several hundred repos. Only the 25 most active are listed in the
sidebar. There is no way to browse the hundereds not listed there for
notification tallies.

THERFORE Github now hides notifications from small and nascent repos from me,
and that's definitely not fun.

------
milky2028
I really don't need another half-baked social platform built into something
that already does one thing very well.

------
_ZeD_
>>> The Trending page used to be a straight-up list of the projects with the
most new stars in the last 24 hours across the whole site (and by language).

honestly, I never ever knew there was a "trending" page on GH...

>>> I always thought of it as the defacto front page of the open source
movement.

and I am old enough to remember freshmeat...

------
gdgtfiend
> The old Trending algorithm was definitely flawed, but it was simple,
> objective, and ever so slightly ruthless. It heavily skewed toward
> JavaScript and web development, but under-indexed a lot of backend and AI
> stuff.

Isn't that super contradictory? How is the old algorithm both objective AND
skewed towards Javascript?

~~~
Cthulhu_
The author didn't say it was fair, they said it was objective; objectively
speaking, JS projects get all the new stars compared to backend and AI stuff,
therefore are the most popular.

Of course, a more fair algorithm - if your definition of fair is that multiple
disciplines and specializations, and / or language get the same exposure -
would be to show the top starred / most active repos in certain categories
(back-end, AI, specific languages, etc).

------
djsumdog
I never even realize GitHub had a project listing page. I miss the old
FreshMeat (later FreeCode) back when it was the entire
FreshMeat+SlashDot+SourceForge network.

FreshMeat was an amazing resource for new and exciting open source tools.
Today ... it's pretty much just Hackernews, and we only get a small subset.

------
chrshawkes
If you're looking for the latest projects, I find YouTube to be helpful with
these types of lists which used to get curated better by GitHub.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7XU2acXag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7XU2acXag)

------
ilitirit
I've always just used github as a source control repo. It's also useful that
Google links open source projects when I search for things.

If the trending page disappeared today I wouldn't notice. In fact, the only
time I ever read about it is when I stumble across blog posts that mention it.

------
meerita
I never used the trending page. I'm a find-by-search user. I just want
relevant stuff when I need it.

------
TedShiller
Well, Microsoft has never made any acquisition look good. It's not something
they're known for.

~~~
MH15
The trending/discover algorithm changed before Microsoft iirc.

------
ericol
PSA: This is not about GH in general, is about a particular characteristic of
it (The "trending repos" page) that is even possible a lot of people haven't
heard about.

Also, there might be other ways to find out what is "trending" (And you should
try to find them).

------
draugadrotten
Recommending github projects based on the github projects you already are
interested in could be a problem that can be solved by a recommender engine
like the ones from [https://movielens.org/](https://movielens.org/)

~~~
sanxiyn
It doesn't work well, because people use GitHub's starring feature in many
different ways. Star rating of movies is pretty comparable between users once
you standardize it. Not for GitHub stars.

------
stblack
The trending pages were increasingly listing repositories from Asia, written
in its native languages.

On some days, half or more of the top 25 listed repos were Asian language.

Today, anectdotally, there are zero repos in Asian languages in the Trending
Today page.

This might be a factor. Politics? Ethnocentricism?

------
Waterluvian
Interesting to find someone using github in an entirely different manner.

Not sure I was ever aware of the ranking mechanics that can be so addictive if
you take that sort of thing seriously.

I think I’ve relied on my projects getting stars as KPI for “are people using
this?”

------
mbeex
> At first I thought it was just me getting older

You are still far from it, concluding from your problem.

Up to now, I never heard about this 'trending page'. I'm quite aware, that
GitHub is also a social platform business including of course the whole
associated industry of for example self-marketing as the compulsory 'side'
effect (the term 'side' is debatable).

For me, it is a tool and as such in the meantime not the best anymore. The
missing group feature (even true for bitbucket) alone was reason enough for me
to transfer the better part of my projects to GitLab and structuring them
there in a sufficiently satisfying way. Some of them are still mirrored on
GitHub and thats it. Not to talk about CI integration and other features.

As for some other comments here - even for me my repositories are mostly my
work. Other contributions are rather short-lived PR's etc. So, this is all
fine for me.

------
oxfordmale
Github is a tool like a hammer. It is essential to get certain jobs done, but
hardly going to win a price for the most exciting tool. I never looked out for
trending repos, however, that might be a professional basis as a data
engineer.

------
bovermyer
I used to follow the latest trends via various blogs and websites. As I've
gotten older, though, I've found that I get the most valuable insights into
what's new and genuinely interesting from talking to people.

------
TheRealPomax
I thought the fun part was being able to share code with the world and get
contributions or even people interested in teaming up out of that? I have
literally never looked at trending, and I'm not sure why I ever would.

------
gitpusher
I was hoping he would discuss Github as a whole, as implied by the headline.

Instead he complains about the Trending feature. I did not even know there was
a Trending feature, and I've been using Github since 2012.

------
hoseja
For a little bit of additional discovery and trending, there is also
[https://git.news/](https://git.news/) , though it tends to be a bit same-y.

------
kerkeslager
GitHub was never _fun_ for me, it's _useful_.

I'd be happy to see the entirely useless "Trending" page go away, along with a
lot of the social features. They take up so much screen space.

------
hvis
It's hard for me to see how the "fun" factor of GitHub could be concentrated
on the "Trending" page.

For me it's a place to do development. And it's been improving steadily on
that.

------
afandian
The idea of trending libraries / code seems almost antithetical to good
software development practice. Favouring the shiny and new over the reliable
and stable seems classic Goodhart's Law.

------
lmayliffe
"It heavily skewed toward JavaScript and web development, but under-indexed a
lot of backend and AI stuff.

And yet, it was cool as hell that everyone was on the EXACT same playing field
and scoreboard."

.....................

------
amelius
They should build a product that runs in a terminal instead of a browser.

------
WA
There is a trending page? I use GitHub only to access specific projects.

------
s9w
I've discovered some pretty neat projects from the trending page and the
"Explore repositories" thing on the main page. So for me that works well
unlike most recommendation things.

------
teekert
Yeah, you grow, a platform grows, sometimes you grow into different
directions. Move on.

And indeed, I don't need a social aspect, I need to make a branch from an
issue, like I can with bitbucket.

------
hypewatch
Checking what JavaScript projects on github received the most new stars in the
last 24 hours every day doesn’t sound like fun to me. In fact I’ve never
thought of GitHub as “fun”.

------
HeavyStorm
One thing I can agree with: I've no idea why github never attempted a DM
system.

I realize it could be abused, but being able to talk to people directly on the
platform seems so essential...

------
DevKoala
I need GitHub as a tool. If pragmatism and UX is ever affected for the sake of
“engaging” me into social aspects, I would move my repos. I hear GitLab is
great.

------
recursive
I didn't even know there was a trending page on github.

> I always thought of it as the defacto front page of the open source
> movement.

It seems more like an auxiliary curiosity at best.

------
alkonaut
I have used github for years and I have never even realized there was a system
of trends/top lists. To me, Github is Amazon S3 for source code and issues!

------
jansan
So what are the alternatives to GitHub? Of course there is GitLab. How about
Google Cloud Repositories? HAs anybody tried it? Any other suggestions?

------
arminiusreturns
Funnily enough, I recently deleted my account there. Mostly because I don't
trust MS and don't want to be in their ecosystems in any way.

------
progx
I guess i never viewed the trending page on github.

------
mirekrusin
So what is the scoring based on for trending now?

------
__chrisconlan__
This is shocking to me because I have been using GitHub for 5+ years and have
literally never seen the "Trending" page.

------
timvisee
Oh man, I still remember the day I was #1 on the old GitHub trending page with
ffsend. That isn't so fun anymore these days.

------
boraalparat
I learned so many things from the trending page back in early days. A lot of
useful stuff was there. Now, it is not.

------
eeZah7Ux
GitHub was never fun: it killed the decentralized aspect of git. It also
killed git-based bug trackers and wikis.

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "After a lot of reflection, I believe the turning point was when they
changed how the ranking system on the Trending page worked."

The turning point was the second it was sold to Microsoft. People fail to
realize GitHub is Microsoft now and Microsoft is a corporation. And what
corporations do best? Earn money for their shareholders. Everything else is
just dust in eyes.

------
abimaelmartell
I used to spend a lot of time browsing through the Explore and Trending pages
on Github.

Now it's just useless.

------
rattray
Should the title of this on HN be "The GitHub Trending page isn't fun anymore"
?

------
carapace
> I always thought of it as the defacto front page of the open source
> movement.

It's a proprietary site!

------
tasubotadas
If anybody ever thought of fun while using git, I would probably think that
that person is a masochist. It's a tool for work.

It's actually a shame that git won over all the other DVS, because I used to
find mercurial much more approachable and a lot easier to use. Mercurial maybe
could be called fun, but definitely not git.

~~~
jiofih
It’s about GitHub, the platform, not git the VCS.

~~~
tasubotadas
I thought you mainly interface with github via git but apparently most people
go there to chat.

~~~
jiofih
I don’t get the sarcasm. GitHub, the website, where you make pull requests,
issues, discuss them, explore forks and other projects, see their activity and
connect to other developers. All very tangential to git.

If you never used any of that it’s fine, though you missed out on a very nice
side of OSS.

------
wink
TIL there is a "trending" page on Github. I think I signed up in 2009.

------
anarsdk
Try changing the "Date range". You have it set to "Today".

------
throw_m239339
People here forget that Microsoft had its own code repository app which I
forgot the name of, which was a flop then Microsoft just closed it. I wouldn't
be surprised if GitHub ended up the exact same way. On the internet, there is
no such thing as "too big to fail".

------
el_dev_hell
> I wouldn’t be opposed to a GitHub NewsFeed, project chat, or even DMs.

Please god no.

------
_curious_
"We went from a flawed meritocracy"

What does flawed mean in this context?

------
jswny
I didn't even know that GitHub had a trending page.

------
emiliosic
Use Gitlab. Better yet, run your own instance of Gitlab

------
noxer
People really want social media in a SCM++ Tool?

------
jedberg
The old trending algorithm was too easy to game. Just get a bunch of friends
to Star your repo and you star theirs and you both show up.

The current method is worse but seems less gameable.

~~~
jiofih
“A bunch of friends” being about a thousand. Not that easy.

~~~
jedberg
Well back in the day it didn’t take nearly that many.

Nowadays you’d have to do a mailing list.

------
irrational
TIL. GitHub has/had a trending page.

------
saargrin
thought this was gonna be about master/slave controversy

i'm relieved its actually about a real issue

------
dreamcompiler
Github has a Trending page??

------
dkempner
Better'n SourceForge.

------
quickthrower2
tl;dr: trending page algo changed

~~~
mulle_nat
Github has a trending page ? I never noticed.

------
MintelIE
Microsoft sucks the life out of everything they touch.

------
krisjointz
its alright

------
_pmf_
Social coding is cancer.

