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GitHub Was Never About the Source Code | Matthias Endler
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With GitHub down once again, I decided to write this long-overdue blog post.
This was the top comment on Hacker News when I started writing this:
For a variety of reasons, we had a centralized place where everyone of a<br>particular set of persuasions could connect, and this had outside benefits for<br>the community as a whole. That place is becoming untenable, and with the loss<br>of goodwill and stability, the community’s started to dissipate. […] But<br>those emergent features like a core community and default expectation of<br>where you can find someone will fade .<br>And that is a very real loss for all of us.
That resonates sooo much with me. GitHub has never been about the source code. It’s where I hang out with friends, see what they’ve built, and discover all the cool projects they star. It’s the only “Facebook” I still visit. There is no other place like it anymore.
GitHub is on its way out, and the community around it is starting to crumble.<br>My feed basically consists of the same two people starring repos and being really “active.”<br>The rest is just noise. (I wish I could show you a screenshot, but, well, GitHub is down.)
“AI” has only accelerated this trend.<br>These days, you’re lucky to get a pull request from a real human being.<br>Discussing changes is no longer fun when you’re talking to a bot 90% of the time.
I hope someone builds a community for developers; we need one now more than ever.
The way I see it, our code could live anywhere. We could share stars, comments, and project updates through a common network, similar to Keybase or Mastodon.
Send me an email if you like the idea.
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