

Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad - NoKarmaForMe
http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%20works%20well,%20my%20mistake%20made%20them%20look%20bad

======
adelevie
Very classy apology. While Andrew's quickly jumping to conclusions is
certainly not something to emulate (as he obviously implies in his apology),
his ability to assume complete responsibility for a mistake that damaged a
reputation is something all members of Internet communities should take note
of.

~~~
petercooper
Similarly, GitHub acted in a classy way too. Tom helped Andrew throughout the
thread without any snark or dismissals that are, sadly, quite easy to dish
out. It certainly contrasts with the recent "go away" Tumblr story.

~~~
baxter
Hadn't heard of this. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151768>

~~~
steveklabnik
Don't forget to see this comment!
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203>

As well as this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152047>

------
js2
With apologies to xkcd:

    
    
      $ git push origin HEAD:make-me-a-sandwich
      git: what? make it yourself.
      $ git push origin +HEAD:make-me-a-sandwich
      git: okay.

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theDoug
Instant overreaction and posting to HN has come up a lot lately.

The Skype story yesterday was another mistake where a technical support person
wrote that a bug was "by design" when they meant to type "bug," so of course
it gets raced into HN as 'news' rather than trying to get clarification.

~~~
Dobbs
To be fair when working as a software tester on more than one occasion did a
developer mark an obvious bug as "by design".

~~~
ryanpetrich
Sometimes it is by design, but the design is flawed.

------
jefe78
+1 for actually stepping forward and apologizing! Always impressive when
people do that.

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nowarninglabel
Thanks for this, it's always tough to admit when one is wrong.

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guywithabike
I think the lesson here is that for all our high-minded self-esteem, Hacker
News is just as susceptible to hive-mind behavior as the sites HN users like
to pooh-pooh.

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wanderr
I wish github (and git in general) had a better way to view the history of
your history, as it were. It's great that get let's you change histoy, but it
can be quite problematic if someone messes up that history, especially if it's
not caught right away. Yes, it's in the reflog, but so is _everything_, so
finding the right thing can be quite daunting.

~~~
steveklabnik
Have you tried gitk, or <https://github.com/shoes/shoes/network> , for
example? What would you like to see?

I don't work for GitHub, I've just never really had this problem, so I'm
curious.

------
perlgeek
As a side remark, I'd love it if github had an option to disable forced pushes
for a project. In general they are very confusing in collaborations.

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grandalf
Shame on those who upvoted the original linkbait story. When will these sorts
of sensational headlines stop?

~~~
dschobel
No kidding, if I were GH I would be furious that that story was sitting at the
top of HN (which is about as influential in the circles GH cares about as it
gets) for the better part of a day.

It's embarrassing for both Andrew and for HN.

------
epochwolf
Google cache:
[http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%...](http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%20works%20well,%20my%20mistake%20made%20them%20look%20bad)

Site is down. (Or not, there was a 500 error when I tried to access it)

~~~
jefe78
Seems to be back again.

------
bbuffone
It is great to admit but this is also good lesson for developers... you should
always blame yourselves first; I have heard lots of funny stories over the
years.

1.) I think there is an issue with the compiler :) 2.) The Java Classloader is
broken :) 3.) Git is broken :)

My response -> "I will think of a million things it could possibly be on my
way to your desk of those; the compiler, the classloader and git won't even be
in the list"

3.) It doesn't work in IE 6...

Well ok, I guess the browser is the one area where blaming something else
might be appropriate.

If after looking through all the possibilities that could be a reason for it
not being your fault, stand up get a coffee and look at it again.

------
spullara
Wouldn't it be great if your scm actually kept all your changes no matter
what?

~~~
spullara
So it appears that every response to my message said that it wasn't lost but
would be in 90 days if no one noticed. That is not the definition of 'never
loses changes'. The fact of the matter is that someone that doesn't understand
the way git works can cause irreversible damage without recourse if not
discovered. In many source control systems this is not the case. I still use
git on github even with this flaw.

~~~
wladimir
The underlying problem is that GIT was never meant as a centralized scm. A
centralized source control system will never lose changes, even if one of the
users messes up. This means that it distinguishes between normal committers
and 'admins'. Only admins can do irreversible actions.

Git uses local, cloned repositories and users can do everything they like with
them. Changes can be pushed and pulled to other repositories, possibly
changing them irreversibly.

By using github you use GIT in a (kind of) centralized way. Suddenly there is
an 'central project repository' again, that needs to be protected against
damage. But as GIT was never meant to do this, and trusts its users, it has to
be bolted on somehow... at least, that's how I understand it.

I hope they will get this right as it's very important for accountability.

~~~
stewars
You don't need to allow others write access to your repositories on github.
Simply have them fork your public repository but don't add them as a
collaborator. They can commit all they want and send you or any one of your
'admin' collaborators a pull request. This idea that git/github is losing
changes is not true. You have at least until the next time the gc is run (90
days at github?), which is well beyond the time required to resolve the issue
in any active project.

------
alexg0
This is something that always bothered me about git. Anyone with access to the
repository can delete or overwrite a branch. Would be nice, if github had a
way restrict deletes of a branch, or a prevent a force push. Not sure if git
architecture actually makes this possible.

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malkia
Wasn't there fiasco involving one prominent magazine for PC machines, where
the author claimed that Vista was using all of the memory, while that memory
in fact was cached.

But when in doubt, what happens with your cache on XP, Vista or Windows7 just
use Mark Russinovich's RamMap. For example it helped me realize that NTFS
compressed files, although compressed on disk would end up using the same
amount of cache (memory). For that reason, it's probably better to store files
compressed, rather than relying on NTFS.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=rammap>

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eli
Good for you. I think this points to plenty of opportunity out there for
making Git easier to use. I know I would pay for something like that.

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forkrulassail
Takes something to apologize like that. I'm sure they're glad about it.

You seriously made me paranoid about my repositories.

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AliCollins
Nicely done, sir. Assuming all present here are human (!), we all screw
up...something to do with the programming, I guess?!

------
BasDirks
Everyone learns from this! Now let's form a circle, colour some line-drawings,
and watch a Disney flick.

