
Github turns five - trustfundbaby
https://github.com/blog/1470-five-years
======
aashaykumar92
Congrats on 5 years to Github! They are true pioneers for creating a social
network for programmers, and not limiting it to just experienced programmers.
I barely knew how to program but I was suggested to try Github with the little
HTML/CSS/JS I knew and it is been my favorite, not to mention most effective,
way to practice to become a better programmer. Collaborating with fellow
hackers on projects is more fun than I ever imagined. They have actually found
a way to make programming a social and fun experience! The beauty of Github is
that it attends to programmers of all experience levels, so I really don't see
myself straying away from it even as I become a better programmer. Here's to
hopefully more than another 5 years!

As an afterword, I guess the big question is: What comes after this? What will
make Github irrelevant?

~~~
amorphid
GitHub rocks. I would only switch for the yet to be invented GitGrub. If
you'll request is accepted, you get a free burrito.

~~~
leahculver
GrubHub! My favorite Hub. GitHub is second. Though if they partnered...

------
DigitalSea
Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google.
Sourceforge was okay, but it felt clunky and inaccessible, not to mention it
lacked really any kind of social aspect. Github brought source control to the
mainstream and made open source cool again and made it felt like an actual
social thing as opposed to single developers making commits without context to
a repository.

If it weren't for Github I probably would never have open sourced the amount
of work that I have done since its inception nor contributed to the amount of
projects I've committed too.

~~~
veidr
> _Github is probably one of the biggest innovations in web since Google._

I love GitHub as much as the next guy, but 99% of Internet users neither know
what git is, nor have any need of it. There are a little more than a million
users. (EDIT: well no, there are now 3 million.[2])

By contrast, Google is used by over a billion people every month.[1]

[1]:
[http://www.statista.com/topics/1001/google/chart/899/unique-...](http://www.statista.com/topics/1001/google/chart/899/unique-
users-of-search-engines-in-december-2012/)

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub>

~~~
derefr
Innovations in infrastructure are usually unknown to most of the people using
that infrastructure--until they fail. Think of what would happen if Github was
down for a week: how many users would now have the name "Github" on their lips
(probably with a negative connotation) after some web service they _do_ use
said "sorry, the fix on that showstopper bug has been delayed a bit; Github is
down, you see."

~~~
heelhook
The very fact that git is distributed means that if github was down for a week
your development shouldn't suffer, just become more annoying maybe, but you
can easily so without GitHub I'd you know the ABC of how git works.

Your theory doesn't hold when comparing github with infrastructure everybody
uses but few people know about, just because its used by many people that
write programs that are used by many other users doesn't mean it's an
infrastructure like an Internet backbone.

~~~
derefr
> your development shouldn't suffer, just become more annoying maybe

Right, that's why I wrote "has been delayed a bit", not "has been delayed
indefinitely." If you run a distributed OSS project, where your main point of
contact with your collaborators is _through_ Github--and your workflow relies
on using Github's _collaboration_ features (its wiki and issue tracking, its
pull requests, etc.) then Github going down can greatly _impede_ (though not
halt) that workflow. (In fact, I might say that if your workflow _doesn't_
rely on the collaboration features, you're not really "using" Github--you're
just using git, and syncing with Github, like any project which has a
Subversion repo with a Github mirror.)

A more major problem with Github going down, though, would be needing to pull
an update from a third-party library to fix a bug, when _that library's_
canonical repo is stored on Github. (A problem with any centralzied repo host,
really.) If you have any git:// URL dependencies in your Gemfile, or you use
Bower at all, you might have a problem deploying your updates...

------
hkmurakami
Without Github, contributing to OSS would have been much harder for me (being
a noncoder). Thank you for giving us a tool with tremendous leverage in many
aspects, both technical and nontechnical.

~~~
fudged71
In which ways do you contribute to OSS on github without being a coder?
Through issues?

~~~
rohitnair
From his website, "In my spare time, I contribute to the open source Fluentd
Project's documentation." In fact, you probably don't even need to understand
Git, since pretty much everything can be done via the browser now. Clicking on
the "Edit" button on README/documentation pages automatically forks the repo
and makes it trivial to submit patches.

~~~
hkmurakami
Yup :) I'm involved with the docs.

While it's true that everything can be done in the browser, "saving =
committing" there so I prefer to use the terminal and emacs.

------
jacquesm
Github mainly succeeded because of the various shortcomings in Gits command
line interface. Github made certain models of cooperative development
incredibly easy, and since most or almost all of the open source development
is just that the time was 100% ripe for something like github.

Still, it is an incredible achievement and I hope that github will be around
for a very long time to come.

For a laugh:

<http://svnhub.com/>

~~~
stiff
Github succeeded because they have build a fantastic platform, order of
magnitude smoother, better looking, easier to use and faster than any of the
similar projects. Try to navigate <http://sourceforge.net/> or
<http://code.google.com/intl/pl/> for a while to get a feel of how free VC
hosting looked like before Github - nobody approached the problem with a
normal (in the industry) professional product design approach, it was just
developers throwing things together, those are almost showcases for how bad
developers can be at user experience design when left by themselves.

~~~
heelhook
Actually, read the history of how github got started, they started exactly the
way you describe: a hack put together by developers that needed that and built
it as a side project without thinking about releasing it as a product.

------
WalterBright
Github has been a great boon to the D programming language community
<https://github.com/d-programming-language> . There's been a very obvious
'before' and 'after' we moved to github.

~~~
cpeterso
Was the improvement from increased visibility for the project or from changes
in the development process using GitHub?

~~~
WalterBright
Both. What also improved enormously was participation by people who previously
thought it too clumsy to. Github brought an organized, easy method of
contributing. It was like night and day.

Switching to github was probably the best organizational decision we made.

From a business standpoint, I've also found that github's severs are fast and
reliable, and the turnaround for tech support questions is fast and accurate.

I'm very impressed with github.

------
trustfundbaby
I LOVE github, their little project forever changed the way I think about &
write software, and their ideas (blogposts/presentations) about how to build
software are truly a massive inspiration for me.

PS: Would be awesome to see who has the oldest github account on here. I
joined April 20 2008.

~~~
wycats
January 11, 2008. User id 4[1] :D

[1]: <https://api.github.com/users/wycats>

~~~
jashkenas
Incidentally, this id is why we call wycats the "gate to enlightenment" --
it's proof that he's the "Mu" programmer.

A monk once asked, does JavaScript have a Buddha-nature or not?

Wycats said, "nil".

The monk said, "Above to all the Haskells, below to all the crawling Javas,
all have Buddha-nature. Why is it that JavaScript has not?"

Wycats said, "Because it has the nature of karmic delusions."

([http://blog.bigbinary.com/2008/06/23/why-the-id-of-nil-
is-4-...](http://blog.bigbinary.com/2008/06/23/why-the-id-of-nil-is-4-in-
ruby.html))

------
Achshar
It's just been _five_ years? It feels like I have been reading about it
forever. Never got to use it because of limited private repos.

------
lanna
Say what you want about Git, GitHub is awesome.

~~~
beefsack
I haven't heard too many people say bad things about Git.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Git is like linux in... 1996 maybe. The underlying technology is pretty
awesome, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of usability. Git is
enormously powerful, but it has some key weak spots that can lead to intense
frustration, and it doesn't exactly guide users into using it in the best way
possible.

~~~
mtraven
Mercurial is like a git designed for humans. Basically the same design
(distributed, branching and merging is very easy) but with slightly higher-
level command line options that removes some of the rough edges. I kind of
wish it had won over git.

~~~
pseut
The obvious counter is that Git is like a dvcs designed for maintainers and
only incidentally for developers. I started out using bzr and eventually
switched to git, partly to try out github, and things like rewriting history
have become a major part of my workflow (I'm picking that one because it seems
to surprise people coming from other vcs systems how easy it is to rewrite
history in git).

I'm sure mercurial is nice, and given its users passion for it I might
recommend it to people starting version control for the first time (I'm in
academia, version control is surprisingly rare), BUT... I'd use the term "very
sharp edges" and not "rough edges." My impression is that they're meant to be
there.

------
simonista
Wow, I had no idea Github had 158 employees. I guess I mostly hear about their
engineering team here on HN, and didn't realize the rest of the team was that
big. Congrats on 5 years guys, it's a great service!

------
prezjordan
Github is the reason I have an awesome internship this summer. Thanks :)

------
kmfrk
What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting
companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did.

I'm as excited about GitHub as ever.

~~~
chimeracoder
> What I really love about GitHub is that it's one of the really exciting
> companies that has never really disappointed nor sold out like Twitter did.

To be completely fair to Twitter, it's been less than a year since Github
raised their first round of funding ($100MM). Twitter has raised $1.6
_billion_ over the last seven years.

It's a lot easier not to sell out when your investors aren't pressuring you to
pull a profit yet. (Also remember that almost all of Github's funding comes
from a single investor).

I like Github, but it's a bit premature to say that they've "never sold out".

~~~
kmfrk
That just means that GitHub were much quicker to find a profitable business
model than Twitter, though. :)

------
x-sam
Happy birthday Github! You are rocking opensource.

It's just amazing so easily be able to fix some software, to make some
commitments into project you do love!

But, 6 million repositories for 3.5 million users? Really? How many bots do
you have? I'm not sure, that general user has 1.7 repository. I thought the
number is higher, at least 3 or something. How many repositories do you have
with forks?

------
igorgue
I joined on April 12 2008 [1], I wonder what's my user id :)

[1] <https://github.com/igorgue>

~~~
jbarnette
It's in the early 7000's.

------
jval
Amazing work github! Now get those sticker packs back in the store so I can
buy a few and stick them everywhere :P

------
xiaoma
Yay!

BTW, I live in SF and I _REALLY_ want one of those octo-nyan-cat stickers for
my laptop. Just sayin...

------
nicholassmith
Hard to imagine a world without GitHub now, it's become that pervasive. Great
service, great people there. Hopefully we'll be saying happy birthday in
another 5 years with even more people using it for open source projects.

~~~
ukandy
GitHub really become the standard for open source projects in such a short
space of time, even the big name projects felt compelled to switch. Congrats
GitHub.

------
jthomp
Happy Birthday, GitHub! I use it every day to collaborate with fellow hackers
that don't live anywhere close to me. It's indispensable for me. Here's to 5
more years!

------
Paul_D_Santana
How did _you_ learn Github?

~~~
shurcooL
For me, it was this: <http://try.github.com/>

I've been on the verge wanting to learn Git and GitHub for a long time, but
that was what pushed me over the edge.

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
Looks great. Thanks for the link!

------
joeblau
Happy Birthday. Project is awesome and so are the people.

------
xguox
the same birthday for Meteor(<http://meteor.com/>)

------
pom
It’s also my Github birthday, as I joined on April 11th, 2011!

------
malkia
Hub Hub Hurrray Gitters!

------
andyl
Git and GitHub have both made monstrous contributions to the software
development landscape. I've acquired incredible new powers, for free!

What other power-tools are on the horizon? What's next?

------
remi
Moderators edit titles all the time but now it’s been 7 hours and no one still
has corrected "Github" to "GitHub"?

