It was done in-house. We really care about how our graphs look, because graphs represent information. It's like typography. Humans learned how to write 5000 years ago, and it took us a very long while until we mastered the art of transmitting information like that. Once we mastered it, however, we started caring about the way we present that information. For no specific reason, but we developed unique typefaces that look beautiful, different, yet transmit the same information.
Likewise, we've spent a ton of valuable time graphing and mining data from all over our stack; it's only natural that after that, we care about how we present that data. Like typography, it's hard because it's an arduous hunt for the aesthetics hidden behind information. But this hunt is what makes us human.
That's why we design beautiful graphs, just like we'd design a beautiful typeface. Not because we are GitHubbers, nor because we are designers, but because we are humans.
Life is too short to stare at ugly graphs. And yes, you should feel bad.
This is something that coders should think about. A culture of quality drives looking for perfection at every level, whether it be code, typefaces, graphs, or network configuration.
Just 'cause there's non-code aspects doesn't mean they have freedom to be ugly when you're striving for excellence.
I don't think its about pride and making it pretty - that is - maybe it's the reason, but it's not what brings success in that area.
I think it's because, when it looks good, it's easier to find the information, and it makes you want to look at it. It makes you want to work with it.
Now then again while I realize github has a huge, huge amount of things running at the same time, I do find github quite a bit slower than my "own" remote repos :P
Don't mind the haters that think twitter bootstrap is a good enough UI wrapper, those are some pretty sexy graphs.
As a developer I'm totally jealous of the ability to create simultaneously elegant and usable UI/UX, even when I used to try and just copy the CSS and structure right from the HTML source (I've since stopped) it was always missing that "je ne sais quois".
Likewise, we've spent a ton of valuable time graphing and mining data from all over our stack; it's only natural that after that, we care about how we present that data. Like typography, it's hard because it's an arduous hunt for the aesthetics hidden behind information. But this hunt is what makes us human.
That's why we design beautiful graphs, just like we'd design a beautiful typeface. Not because we are GitHubbers, nor because we are designers, but because we are humans.
Life is too short to stare at ugly graphs. And yes, you should feel bad.
PS: we have no project managers at GitHub.