
GitHub is experimenting with personal READMEs - benjaminjosephw
https://twitter.com/mschoening/status/1265774218404233217
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deft
This is great, yet another place I have to repost my resume/portfolio/blog to
satisfy the trend-following recruiters and hirers... Maybe I'll just do this

    
    
        # [CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS](https://mysite.tld)

~~~
koolba
Bonus points if you make it a redirect loop so they get sucked into a never
ending void.

~~~
fermienrico
thats...that's beautiful.

~~~
saagarjha
I don't know, I think this is better:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23340697)

~~~
yencabulator
I've seen way too many Github projects where the "Website" link in the header
is to the repo itself...

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ken
When MSFT bought them, I predicted they would pivot to adding features I don’t
care about. I was right. They went from the best support I’ve ever seen
(report an issue, get a personal email asking for details, see it fixed) to
the worst (not touching a single feature I find worthwhile).

There’s about a thousand things I wish they would fix or add before this. They
still don’t allow videos so every screencast demo on GitHub is still a giant
GIF, right?

I used to like GitHub so much I paid out of pocket even when I was unemployed.
Now it’s on my list to check out GitLab again. Companies don’t know when to
stop. It’s like they created the bicycle and add another wheel every year as
an improvement.

~~~
tourist2d
"GitHub is adding too many dumb features, btw please support my use case of
having videos in my repo"

~~~
LordIllidan
I've often wished this feature actually, especially when submitting pull
requests, and you'd like to showcase the new features. I've often had to
either embed a video link or convert to gif.

~~~
kisna72
I use gifs for this and they work great!

~~~
mikewhy
As someone who likes to do previews in PRs, mp4's are infinitely better than
gifs. Better colors, better frame rate, better resolution, better size when
you change any of those factors. It's really, really silly GitHub still don't
support them.

------
numbsafari
I see this in the context of TripleByte attempting to take on LinkedIn.

MS owns LinkedIn. This very much looks like an effort to turn GitHub profiles
into LinkedIn-style profiles.

This is not going to be pretty.

~~~
zeta_
Except this one is opt-in and it was a feature request from the community

~~~
robotron
Opt-in with the likely expectation that every developer worth hiring has one.

~~~
ViViDboarder
Who’s expectation? I don’t expect developers I hire to have a GH profile. Most
GH links I see on resumes are thoroughly unimpressive anyway (one or two
college homework assignments and an untouched fork of some open source
project).

Having a good one is a plus, but having a poor one is worse than not having
one.

~~~
binarytox1n
Agreed: as a hiring manager I check every github profile I see on a resume. I
have never been anything but disappointed.

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boromi
I'm not a fan of turning GitHub into social media. Please GitHub don't go down
this route.

~~~
rhn_mk1
GitHub is already social media. What else is the star system, the network of
forks, the profile bio and the ability to comment?

~~~
elliekelly
Perhaps I’m in the minority but I use the star system almost like a bookmark.
Is that not what it’s for? Is a star the equivalent of a “like”?

~~~
fileeditview
Not sure what it is for but everyone I talked to uses it as bookmark system..
so you are not alone.. to the contrary.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, me too. Stars are for me just Github-scoped bookmarks.

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spv
Please add math support in github markdown. Something real users need.

Stop trying to make it a social network.

~~~
natfriedman
We're definitely going to add math support to GitHub markdown.

~~~
maxfan8
Is there a timeline for adding math support to GH markdown?

I've had to resort to human-side rendering to put LaTeX/math in a GitHub
flavored markdown file.

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fermienrico
I don't like Emojis in my documents. I think they are distracting. Tools like
Notion is actively promoting it like this new Github profile docs. Does anyone
else feel the same? :-)

~~~
dhritzkiv
I suppose the answer is to simply not use Emoji in your documents.

~~~
fermienrico
Lol that's obvious. But, the trend is what I am concerned about and asking if
others feel the same. I can't control if I am reading someone else document
full of emojis. Can you imagine RFCs in this format?

To me, Emojis have a place when you're discussing with others and socially
interacting. May be even in code reviews to reduce friction and add some human
emotion to what you're saying in cold words. Use it to chat with people -
totally ok.

Documents with emojis is definitely an anti-pattern IMO. To give an extreme
example, can you imagine reading python docs with Emojis? Or Tolstoy? What
about tax documents with emojis? Court proceedings? Job resumes? Aircraft
emergency checklists?

~~~
alexbanks
"I don't like emojis so they are an antipattern."

I don't like emojis so I don't use them. I have no interest in demanding how
other people define their docs.

~~~
plibither8
> I have no interest in demanding how other people define their docs.

I definitely do _not_ want emoji's in official documents, emergency
procedures, etc. And I would demand for the same - emoji's are at best
decorative, and a lot of times a distraction. Most documents that are of
importance to me should be straightforwardly written - and that means no
emojis.

~~~
fermienrico
I totally agree. Emojis are great for _conversations_. Not when information
needs to be conveyed in a document.

------
jonchurch_
There are a lot of commenters sharing their opinions of what they don't like
abut Github’s interface. It is true there are a lot of quirks and warts in
what is a site many of us spend a lot of time on.

Ive found browser extensions have been a great way to augment and customize my
Github experience, bringing quality of life improvements that Im grateful to
have every day.

My top two favorites are:

Refined Github [1] -- huge collection of quality of life improvements. e.g.
always sort issues/PRs as most recently updated first, when recently pushed to
a branch show a button on project page (or upstream of fork) to open a PR
based on that branch, quicklink to most reacted to comment on an issue page.
Also provides a surface to inject custom CSS for personal tweaks.

Octolinker [2] -- Turns require/import/include paths in files into hyperlinks
to that file or repository. I use this every single day to navigate code in
projects.

I know that extensions aren't a panacea, but personally I have found them be
very valuable to my workflow.

[1] [https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-
github](https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github)

[2]
[https://github.com/OctoLinker/OctoLinker](https://github.com/OctoLinker/OctoLinker)

~~~
liminal
Some time ago there was an article posted with a proposal for redesigning the
Github UI [1]. I thought it was mostly great, but it got roundly panned on HN.
In general my takeaway was that people don't like change, even when it
benefits them. Was unfortunate, especially from a crowd that's supposedly all
about technological improvement.

[1] [https://tonsky.me/blog/github-redesign/](https://tonsky.me/blog/github-
redesign/)

~~~
jonchurch_
Found the link to the HN discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19276113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19276113)

------
charlieegan3
Sad to see such a negative reaction here.

We have something similar internally - we call them personal user manuals.
They explain how we like to work (e.g. communication preferences), and a
little bit about ourselves.

We ask new joiners to write theirs when they join. They make a good
introduction to the company and can provide guidance when wondering how best
to interact with others.

------
httgp
I for one am looking forward to this — I’d love to use it as my resume.

~~~
meddlepal
I like the idea... a bit concerned about the future potential that there is an
expectation developers have a GitHub personal README (err "resume") tho.
That's just not practical for a lot of folks either due to time, interest, or
contractual reasons.

On the other hand, most profession's do have portfolio's and other mechanisms
to share work with new potential employers. For some reason developer's seem
to think a hiring decision should be made entirely on a a handful of 1 hour
interviews conducted in a single day when their work will usually have massive
direct impact on the companies product.

I think there's mostly positives to this and some downsides.

~~~
DJHenk
> For some reason developer's seem to think a hiring decision should be made
> entirely on a a handful of 1 hour interviews conducted in a single day

As opposed to... some generic profile on a central site? I don't think that is
a substitute to actually talking to a candidate.

But what do I know? If I understand sites like HN correctly, talking to a
person is not a good way to discover whether he/she has any skills, so maybe
this is better from a recruitment standpoint. But I'm not going to create a
personal profile there. For the simple reason that the words 'personal' and
'follow our format' don't go together in my mind.

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dundercoder
IMO - People are already viewing your github profile and making judgments,
might as well be able to personalize what they see.

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jedberg
I suspect you will soon see a project on github that will export your LinkedIn
to read me format and vice versa.

Maybe even a git hook to do it automatically.

~~~
diminish
I think soon your github, vs code editor and windows 10 login will be
connected with your linkedin profile.

------
SingAlong
This looks nice. I’m looking forward to using this as a page/list of blog
posts/links.

------
randormie
I currently try to convey my (code) interests by pinning my favorite
repositories on my profile, but this personal README is a ton more expressive.
Looking forward to this!

------
devmunchies
its like my own personal space. they should call this feature myspace.

~~~
elliekelly
Time to dust off my CSS skills.

~~~
ilikehurdles
No need, just improvise. It will be more authentic that way.

------
souterrain
They’ve rediscovered .plan files?

~~~
robotron
That was my first thought also: .plan with MD

------
Jefro118
This is interesting move - I'm surprised they haven't done things like this
earlier. The pinned repos was never a great way to provide an introduction
since it lacks too much context. I've been experimenting with my own project
[0] to get much more info out of GitHub profiles to demonstrate one's skills
by generating portfolio sites, but if GitHub does a good job with this it
might make my solution somewhat redundant.

[0] - [https://www.profiled.app](https://www.profiled.app)

------
dreamcompiler
My first, automatic reaction to this was a whole-head eyeroll. Great. Now
Github wants to be a social network.

My second thought was "Hey if I used this I could delete my stupid Linkedin
account."

------
cordite
I kinda like this, a way to make the profile more personable rather than a
vanity graph and select repos.

But this emoji fascination is beyond me.

------
naruhodo
Like it or not, people use github for self-promotion.

It's not at all unusual for recruiters to ask about your github profile. The
code repositories are the resume. The personal README is the cover letter.

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renewiltord
Reminds me of personal user pages on Wikipedia. Very cool. I like it.

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das_shark
Github as social media?

~~~
api
Time to collaboratively scrape the platform for archiving.

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dancemethis
Time to start thinking on how to tell visitors that Github is an outdated
mirror at best because they like to comply with ICE.

------
bpicolo
This is cool - would love to make one.

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_the_inflator
Github will be enhanced by LinkedIn features then I guess. Smart move by MS.

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elesbao
scumbag managers rejoice, every other incarnation of "check my readme to
understand me" before that was a disaster.

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eplanit
GitHub 2020: Aaaand it's gone.

