I thought a person of your background (who no doubt has it all figured out) would surmise that I was talking about backing up to an external disk and not to another disk on the same laptop. And would grant another person some good faith and be able to generalize without spelling it all out for them: if the point is to back things up then maybe I can infer that other means of backup are also in the cards, like sneakernet or your own server or multiple locations. Huh
You can also back up to a remote. That is not GitHub. You know because the topic is GitHub and how promiscuous they are. Which is why I say: if you don’t need your code to be “social” you don’t need to put it on GitHub.
But even a remote repository is overkill. An automated backup plan with git bundle is automatic, after all. Set it and forget. And backups are supposed to be automated, right? I ask because you have the relevant background here.
> I thought a person of your background (who no doubt has it all figured out) would surmise that I was talking about backing up to an external disk and not to another disk on the same laptop. And would grant another person some good faith and be able to generalize without spelling it all out for them: if the point is to back things up then maybe I can infer that other means of backup are also in the cards, like sneakernet or your own server or multiple locations. Huh
Your snark not withstanding, I actually did understand that an external disk resides outside of the laptop, and find your claim still fantastic and lacking evidence.
As for the rest of your post, you'll forgive my misunderstanding of whatever deeply nuanced point you're making here regarding backing up to a remote because of this at the end of your original post:
> local is enough.
Anyway, seems like you need to take a break. Someone of my background has better things to do than engage in a flame war with someone clearly looking for a fight over a throwaway post.
GitHub, for better or worse, has been one of the easiest ways to backup configuration for ..decades now. It's more secure than sending an email to yourself, Google drive still doesn't have an official linux client, AWS is too enterprisey for a handful of small backup files, and git is incredibly easy to set up + available on so many computers.
I completely get why people would want to use GitHub for a low friction way to store versioned configuration data. It's a natural case for programmers to use the tool they're already using for something else. There's even repos for dotfiles saying stuff like 'hey fork this and make it private' because they know people want to manage dotfiles but might lazily leak some secrets in their own versions
I don't know if I would say it is easy as much as I'd say it is automated. I manage configuration changes to some hardware using git, and do manual backup. However, someone else came out with a script that will automate periodic commits to a GitHub account, and automates the setup.
I have a linux distribution which gives the option to allow login via a set of GitHub usernames, and will enable so by downloading each account's public SSH keys.
I don't use either of these, I don't think the second is even a good idea, but can get why its popularity and price has caused deeper integration into products. Other network backup services or login infrastructure does not have the same level of ubiquitous API nor a relevant free tier.
You can also back up to a remote. That is not GitHub. You know because the topic is GitHub and how promiscuous they are. Which is why I say: if you don’t need your code to be “social” you don’t need to put it on GitHub.
But even a remote repository is overkill. An automated backup plan with git bundle is automatic, after all. Set it and forget. And backups are supposed to be automated, right? I ask because you have the relevant background here.