

Most bizarre Git service and other stupid Rails powered "businesses" - Ice
http://groovie.org/articles/2008/05/06/most-bizarre-git-service-and-other-stupid-rails-powered-businesses

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mechanical_fish
I see we've got yet another coder who doesn't know the value of time or money.

Assume each client project has three coders (you plus two others, perhaps at
the client site). A small github account is $12/month. A small Lighthouse
account is $10/month. That's $22 per month. At, say, $60 per hour -- not a
very high rate -- that's 22 person-minutes per month.

Perhaps _you_ can easily find a trustworthy, experienced system administrator
who, for a total cost of less than $22 per month, will set up Trac and git
servers, keep them up, back them up, keep up with the security bulletins,
install security updates, migrate to new versions, take tech support phone
calls and -- most importantly -- be independent of you, so that after the
project is done you can hand the keys to the client and walk away without
further commitment. I fear that I would spend more than $22 worth of my time
just trying to compose the _want ad_ for such a person. I might waste more
than 20 minutes per month just _worrying_ about my hand-rolled system.

 _one of the entire points of a DVCS is that you do NOT need a central
repository..._

Just because the technology _lets_ you, me, and the production server push and
pull commits directly from our coworkers' laptops doesn't mean that such
behavior is sensible, secure, easy to manage, or easy to teach.

The teaching feature, in particular, is key. Github isn't just a git server...
it's got features that make git easier to understand. At this stage, that's
kind of important, since most of the coders I know don't understand git yet.

~~~
ambition
I agree with you that the author is overly negative. If github provides some
value to some people, more power to them.

At the same time, I object to "doesn't know the value of time."

As an independent coder, I can turn two hours into a working Trac + git, or I
can turn $22/month into a github + lighthouse setup, but depending on the
context, it could be very difficult to turn an arbitrary two hours into $22.
It's not always possible to just bill another two hours. That asymmetry is why
it's sometimes better to DIY than to pay cash.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm glad that you understand that the problem with the author's post is not
that he doesn't find value in github or Lighthouse. It's that he can't imagine
how _anyone_ could find value in github or Lighthouse.

And I don't want to argue that it's never better to DIY. DIY is an important
learning tool: I've installed gitosis once or twice, and I've installed Trac
once or twice, and that's good. And DIY is great if it's your hobby: I do a
lot of my own cooking, for example.

But I'm afraid that, if you already know enough about computers to install git
and Trac inside of two hours... unless you're marooned on a desert island with
nothing but the git source, a statement like "it could be very difficult to
turn an arbitrary two hours into $22" really _is_ an underestimation of the
value of your time. Here's some things you could do with two hours that are
probably worth $22:

\-- Bill half an hour at $45 per hour and then spend 1.5 hours playing WoW.
Assuming that's not possible...

\-- Spend an hour, spread out over a day or two, surfing the web and bidding
on tiny one-hour projects (e.g. "install Wordpress for me") that pay $22.
Accept one and earn $22.

\-- Upgrade your client base: Spend two hours pitching new clients via email.
Bid $11 per hour more than your current rates. Assuming you can make 1 bid per
hour, and the average client project lasts 40 hours, your success rate need
only be 5% to make $22 an hour doing this.

\-- If you know Rails read some sites about Django. If you know Django read
some sites about Rails. If you know both read a book on Drupal. Now, when
someone in your network of friends asks "should I use Rails or Drupal for this
project?" you can answer intelligently. The additional job leads that you'll
pick up will be worth at least $22.

\-- Write a tutorial on installing git and Trac. Put it up on your blog.
Crosslink your blog with your resume. This will reflect positively on your
value as a programmer and raise your future salary by at least, say, $1 a
month. Twenty-two months into your next job, you'll have earned $22.

\-- Flirt on Facebook (a task that is much harder to reliably outsource than
git administration). Or try speed dating. Or take one dance class. By itself,
this won't pay off. So follow it up with more of the same. Keep going until
you meet a wonderful partner and move in with them, at which point you will
realize that, while it took you several hundred hours to find that partner, by
living together you're saving hundreds of dollars a year in expenses like
rent, and maybe even taxes. Assuming you stay together long enough, your
original two hours will end up being worth far more than $22... even if you're
an utterly unromantic pragmatist. :)

------
jawngee
At a certain point dvcs has to be somewhat centralized. If I'm managing an app
in git and need to push to production, it's much easier to pull from a service
than to try to setup something that allows production to pull from my
development machine when it comes time to deploy.

------
utnick
doesn't sound stupid to me...@ github you are not just paying for git... you
can do that yourself... you are paying for backups if your laptop / server
gets hosed

at least that is how i look at it

