wait so your saying github should stick a default .gitignore file in there and bloat it just for the extremely rare case that a user commits and pushes their entire home folder?
Even more rare than that is the user being dumb enough to not consider all files in the home directory before pushing to a public site. I'm sorry but I definitely agree more with the other guy's logic than yours.
You say it has no negative tradeoffs? I say besides changing the whole game (as of right now github does not subject me to a single line of opinionated code) some projects are meant to be small. Sure you can just take out the github .gitignore but thats an extra step. I'm really tired of the stance that we should make development so easy even someone who refuses to RTFM can do it. I'm all against re-inventing the wheel, but dumbing things down like that is not something I can get behind.
I don't know about you, but I've never had a git repo that didn't have a .gitignore file. Having one automatically would make me do one less step.
This doesn't dumb down programming. It improves UX for everybody, while also improving security for beginners. Why does GitHub offer to autogenerate a readme file? Because it's convenient. That doesn't dumb down programming for anybody.
Correct, but having a line that ignores .ssh is bloat in 99.99% of cases.
The key word in your second point is 'offer'. If they were to protect these keys from being pushed they would have to interfere with your first push and add a line to your .gitignore, which you would then have to remove EVERY TIME... if your a developer I don't know how at this point your not like "eh, actually I don't really feel like doing that in every project, that would be annoying".
I would also argue that allowing newbs to become developers without realizing that they are ignoring private key files inside their git repo is just allowing them to continue on to become developers who are not security conscious. You could of course argue back that having to take .ssh/ out of your .gitignore for every project you do hammers the point home for everyone, and it sure would! I don't believe most of us need that, and if that is your idea of improved UX then please don't ever work with me ;) (I'm j/k about that by the way, tabule looks pretty nice and this is all just my opinion, please don't take it personally. I would welcome an opportunity to work with you... just don't go adding .ssh/ in my .gitignore!! :P)
Well, my line of thinking was that having a .ssh line in .gitignore does no harm, so I didn't consider it bloat. You could just leave it in there and it would make no difference, so it could just be completely ignored in most projects. At the same time, you would get a .gitignore file created for you, removing one of the steps you have to do now.
However, I agree with your point that allowing new devs to keep making this mistake and just shielding them from it is a bad idea. With that in mind, it might be nicer if GitHub checked for .ssh files on commit and showed a warning within the web app, letting you know what you did wrong.
Even more rare than that is the user being dumb enough to not consider all files in the home directory before pushing to a public site. I'm sorry but I definitely agree more with the other guy's logic than yours.
You say it has no negative tradeoffs? I say besides changing the whole game (as of right now github does not subject me to a single line of opinionated code) some projects are meant to be small. Sure you can just take out the github .gitignore but thats an extra step. I'm really tired of the stance that we should make development so easy even someone who refuses to RTFM can do it. I'm all against re-inventing the wheel, but dumbing things down like that is not something I can get behind.