

Github teaches us that "great" is better than "good" - generalk
http://joncanady.com/2009/02/good-vs-great/

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swombat
Ok, that's a nice story, but a bit short on meat. On the whole, it reads
almost like an advert for Tender Support. Is the author affiliated?

~~~
technoweenie
Nope, Jon Candy is not part of ENTP. We do really appreciate the kind words he
said about Tender though :)

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unalone
This might not be the place to ask, but I'm curious and I've never quite
understood: why/how do you use version control systems like GitHub? I've never
worked with it in a project, and I've never quite seen the point: I keep all
of my files backed up, my partner does the same, and so if we need to go back
and look at something it's not hard. We edit directly from the server, so
there's no need to sync information. So: why would I use something like Git or
Mercury?

I'm not attempting to troll: I'm just curious. Since Github is YCombinator (I
think, right?), I'm sure a lot of people use it. So: as somebody who works as
part of a two-man group, who keeps his files all stored and backed-up offline,
what does Git get me?

~~~
utnick
Some reasons you might want to use it:

1) can you roll back a certain feature easily if there is a bug with them? 2)
can you and your partner edit the same files at the same time without
clobbering your changes? 3) do you have a record of all of the features added
and bugs you have fixed by datetime 4) are you and your partner always in
sync? 5) if you really just edit files while on server do you ever want to
develop software while disconnected from the web? 6) copying to backup folders
is really cumbersome 7) can you easily create branches of your software if you
want to try out something new and experimental?

The usefulness of version control increases exponentially with the number of
developers you have but I even use it as a solo developer due to many of the
reasons above.

~~~
drinian
Expanding on the issue of finding bugs, everyone should check out git's
"bisect" feature for when regressions crop up:
<http://lwn.net/Articles/317154/>

~~~
silentbicycle
It really helps that git has all the history locally stored, too - doing an
intensive bisect search with something like perforce would take quite a bit
longer.

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gruseom
I love stories like this. We're thinking for our startup that everybody can
have the same job title: Customer Support.

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sgrove
Github stands as one of the more inspirational companies. Their model -
business/customer services/innovation - can be applied to a few other markets
as well.

I definitely wish them luck, as an avid user (though only at the $7/month
level).

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mhartl
Is it just me, or did the author basically use

    
    
      %w(GitHub Github).rand
    

to pick his spelling throughout this article?

For the record:

    
    
      No, ma'am.  Yes, sir!
      
      Github      GitHub
      FaceBook    Facebook
      Javascript  JavaScript
      Blackberry  BlackBerry

~~~
generalk
Author here: Random number generators have logic behind them. My
capitalization prefs there did _not._

~~~
mhartl
No worries. I was just amused at how rapidly the case of the 'H' oscillated.
(Judging from my comment's current score, apparently I was the only one; I
think that including some _actual working code_ should make comments downmod-
proof.)

My list of examples was meant to show that you are in _very_ good company;
major publications get this sort of thing wrong all the time. Keep up the good
blogging!

