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PJ Hyett

Musings about life, programming, and everything in between

How GitHub WorksFebruary 21

Ryan wrote a really great comment over at rc3.org in response to an interview Scott did talking about how we work over at GitHub. Since I can’t seem to link to the comment directly, I’m reproducing it here:

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Having worked in this environment for a little while, I’m not sure I agree that these are really prerequisites, but I’ll try to comment on each:

Your developers must be users of the product.

This is probably the key to everything. Seriously. Take everything below with a grain of salt.

Your developers must be able to iterate without relying too much on other members of the team.

We rely on each other quite a lot, actually. When somebody starts pasting screen caps of some concept into the campfire and they’re really good, people want to jump in and be a part of it. Sometimes you’re working on something and are totally content and loving it but you see that somebody else is really close and they could use a hand and so you make a decision to drop what you’re doing and switch over to that because, hey, let’s just ship that real quick because it’s close and it’s amazing and it’s not like the thing you’re working on has a deadline.

There’s a tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility. More times than not, that results in people using that flexibility to work t

Drinking is a Public Relations VehicleSeptember 15 2009

There has been a vocal minority calling out the GitHub team on our extracurricular activities recently, an opinion summed up fairly well by an anonymous commenter on the recent Engine Yard blog post about our transition to Rackspace:

PS. GitHub guys. I am no-tea-totaller, but you need to layoff the constant stream of alcohol related events, and posts on twitter, etc. Paying customers don’t react well seeing party boys whooping it up when the service continues to suffer from frequent outages, slow queues, occasional inability to push/pull, frequent breakage after code pushes, etc. You need to be seen as serious about the product you are delivering as your customers are about theirs, and behave as though committed to it 110%. Please remember that other git hosting solutions are rising up and the opportunity cost of switching git providers is low due to Git’s distributed nature.

I started to write a post in response to this, but a commenter shortly thereafter nails it so well that I’d rather just include it here:

Getting involved in developer communities, whether via social networking online or in person, is part of the GitHub guys’ jobs. Nobody can be productive at a keyboard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Is it a crime for them to spend a couple evenings a month buying drinks for

Please Call Me a FanboyJanuary 5 2009

Reading the latest in Git fanboy criticism has felt like a time warp back to when I started learning about Rails. Just for fun here’s a quick run-down of my life for the last few years:

• Four years ago I was a J2EE webapp author when I discovered Rails. It turned out writing Ruby was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.

• My Rails skills landed me a well-paying job.

• Last year I was a Subversion user when I discovered Git. It turned out using Git was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.

• My Git skills landed me a spot in a successful startup (for those wondering, this was ultimately the goal after college).

I understand that your mileage may certainly vary jumping on bandwagons, but I don’t know why people are immediately dismissive when there are crowds of really enthusiastic developers.

Assuming their opinions are genuine, there’s a good chance there’s something to what they’re saying even if it isn’t always done with the greatest of tact.

This isn’t fashion design, when developers get excited about things, it normally means it’s helping them become better developers.

I’m a Rails fanboy and a Git fanboy and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.

Git Isn't HardNovember 23 2008

When we tell people why they should use Git over Subversion, the go-to line is, “Git does Subversion better than Subversion, but it does a lot more than that.”

The “lot more” is comprised of a bunch of stuff that makes Git really shine, but it can be pretty overwhelming for those coming from other SCM’s like Subversion.

That said, there’s nothing stopping you from using Git just like you use Subversion while you’re making the transition.

Assuming you’ve installed the necessary software and have a remote repository somewhere, this is how you would grab the code and push your changes back with Subversion:

$ svn checkout svn://foo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk foo # make your changes $ svn commit -m "my first commit"

And how would you do it in Git:

$ git clone git@github.com:pjhyett/foo.git # make your changes $ git commit -a -m "my first commit" $ git push

One more command to make it happen in Git. That extra command has large implications, but for the purposes of this post, that’s all we’re talking about, one extra command.

See, it really isn’t that hard.

Update: I’d be remiss to not also mention that the equivalent of updating your local copy in Subversion compared to Git is `svn update` and `git pull`, respectively. Only one command in both cases.

I <3 San FranciscoJuly 23 2008

There’s something about this picture that encapsulates everything I love about San Francisco.

The eclectic mix of people, trading my car for public transportation (drop-top trolley!), views worthy of a Gap commercial, palm trees seemingly unaware of the cold, all the while heading towards the Farmer’s Market bringing back memories of growing up in the Midwest. There’s a bunch of internet people here, too, believe it or not :-)

Do yourself a favor and visit this city, I’ll be in North Beach if you want to say hi.