

Twitter launches new GitHub page - maccman
http://twitter.github.com/

======
snprbob86
How does that new hip saying go? "WAT?"

<https://github.com/twitter/time_constants> \- Time constants, in seconds, so
you don't have to use slow ActiveSupport helpers

Seriously?? Just look at the freaking source code:
[https://github.com/twitter/time_constants/blob/master/lib/ti...](https://github.com/twitter/time_constants/blob/master/lib/time_constants.rb)
\- Luckily, it appears that it is generated.

I realize that Ruby is slow and all (we experience it daily), but holy crap
people. I also realize that Twitter is a mega scale business, but at what
point does this kind of library become a good idea?

~~~
jfager
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. It replaces a slow way to write
human-readable intervals with a fast way. How is that a bad thing?

~~~
LoonyPandora
Because it is wrong. Time is a difficult problem to solve, it doesn't move at
a constant rate, the length of days and years change. You simply cannot set a
constant and have it be "correct".

It may be more performant to set time ranges as constants, but you will get in
to trouble unless you know exactly what you are doing. The people at Twitter
who wrote the code will be aware of the trade-offs they have made, but what
happens when Jo Random developer forks it on GitHub without thinking it
through because "it's fast and Twitter use it - it must be good!"

For example:

    
    
        T_1_MONTH = 2592000
    

Not all months have 30 days.

    
    
        T_1_SOLAR_YEAR = 31558150
    

A solar year, is (roughly) 31556925.25218 seconds[1].

[1]<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=seconds+in+a+solar+year>

~~~
jfager
Just by the mere fact that these are constants documented to be in seconds,
it's clear that they shouldn't be used for sensitive or precise time
calculations. If you're at the point where you don't realize this, you
probably aren't going to be able to use a full-featured time library
correctly, either.

"Difficult for novices to use incorrectly" is a good feature for code to have,
but it's not the highest good, and its absence does not mean that the code is
bad.

------
mceachen
Super secret easter egg:

<http://twitter.github.com/?larry=25>

(Shh! Secret!)

~~~
mrpollo
Also works if you just click on the twitter logo

~~~
tuananh
looks a bit different. seems like less birds to me.

~~~
fady
same here. a lot less birds :\

------
nilved
I like the design, but what does it offer that Twitter's GitHub page doesn't?
It's just an alternative layout with less information and much less
functionality.

~~~
ceol
I agree. Not only is it lacking the last time each individual repo was
updated, but it seems to be ordered by how many people are watching it rather
than what language it's in or when it was last updated. It looks like the only
things it adds are the nice, at-a-glance repo language colors, the three last-
updated repositories, and— in the case of bootstrap and hogan.js— links to the
project's github site under twitter.github.com rather than its github repo
page.

Nonetheless, it looks fantastic.

------
alexwolfe
The colored triangles are a nice "at a glance" way to see what language the
library is for.

~~~
ryanfitz
I was confused by what the different colored triangles meant, at first I
thought it was perhaps some sort of build status indicator. Adding a key about
the different colors might be nice to have.

~~~
alexwolfe
Agreed, a key would be nice.

------
asktell
Nice. I like the occasional bird flying across the background. Would be nice
to make the layout responsive with Twitter Bootstrap 2.

------
pcmyers
I'm no design expert, but I find this extremely appealing. I would not mind
sitting and browsing through all the different projects (which is hopefully
the goal of the design). My emotional reaction to the site is very different
than most Github pages, which have a reaction (possibly Pavlovian) that goes
"Get back to work!"

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hammerdr
It appears that Twitter is the source for all of these projects, which is not
the case. About 14 of the projects are forks of other repositories on GitHub.
Many of the project descriptions include references to their parent projects
but it would be nice to see them show it is a Twitter fork and not the main
repo.

~~~
squarecog
Most of the "forks" are forks from Twitter employees' personal repos that were
created before things got consolidated under Twitter's account. A few aren't
and are called out as such. Which ones are missing proper attribution?

~~~
hammerdr
None of them, if you click through.

I just looked at the list and thought to myself, "Twitter released
Mustache.js? They also released webrat? No.. that does not make much sense."
and did not realize until I clicked through to those repos and checked to see
if it was a fork.

I'm not suggesting Twitter is doing a Bad Thing(tm). I just think we under-
appreciate those that create and release open source software and that any
sort of nod of the head is a Good Thing(tm).

~~~
maccman
Michael Jackson, a Frontend developer at Twitter, is one of the lead
contributors to Mustache.

------
sek
Scala will be the new big thing, even companies like IBM and SAP are using it
now. But to be really comparable to Java/C++ it will take a decade.

Twitter is very good here, they have a not so enterprisey brand and will
improve popularity in the startup community.

~~~
Tichy
Does IBM and SAP using it imply that Scala is even more complicated than Java,
warranting even higher consulting fees?

~~~
spitfire
Air out your suit! It's time to mint some monaay!

------
DanielRibeiro
Very pleasant design. Also, it would be nice to be able to see thenumber of
viewers/watchers. Maybe just on hover.

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roman_m
Love how they did it through github api, simple and effective implementation.

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lallysingh
Looks to be (at least from a quick sample) Apache licensed. Nice.

