Initially, LinkedIn was just another site where you could find jobs. It was simple to use, simple to connect with others; it even had some friendly groups with meaningful discussions.
And then it gained monopoly as the “sole” professional network where you could actually land a job. If you are not on LinkedIn now, you are quite invisible in the job market. Recruiters are concentrated there, even if they have to pay extremely high prices for premium accounts. The site is horrible now: a social network in disguise, toxic and boring influencers, and a lot of noise and bloated interface to explore.
When Google decided to close their code.google.com, GitHub filled a void. It was a simple site powered by git (not by svn or CVS), and most of the major open-source projects migrated there. The interface was simple, and everything was perfect. And then something changed.
GitHub UI started to bloat, all kinds of “features” nobody asked for were implemented, and then the site became a SaaS. Now Microsoft hosts the bulk of open-source projects the world has to offer. GitHub has become a monopoly. If you don’t keep your code there, chances are people won’t notice your side projects. This bothers me.
Rant over. I hate internet monopolies.
At least, there’s Codeberg, run by a German nonprofit, who’s challenging the monopoly. It is aimed exclusively for FOSS projects, private repositories are forbidden. They are running Forgejo as their bloat-free software forge server.
Now, I think every Web2 website must be operated by a nonprofit.
“Show us your GitHub”
Sure, here it is
“Looks empty”
Ya, I code for work, it’s all in private repos or in Azure Devops.
“So you don’t contribute to open source in your free time?”
No, I spend free time with my family. Again, I code for work, why on earth would I also use my free time for extra coding
“Thanks for your time but…”
Nah thanks for yours, I don’t wanna work for a company that expects me to code for them for for 8 hours and then go and code for someone else for free for more hours. That’s not a healthy work life balance, dickhead.
Edit: well this blew up (in a small lemmy kinda way). To clarify, before I coded for a living I coded as a hobby. Since I now do it full time, I don’t have any itch to scratch, I get my fill 40 hours a week. I’d ONLY be contributing to keep my GitHub looking a certain way for recruiters that one year in five I’m jobseeking and that feels like a waste of time. In reality it’ll probably be dark green the week before I started interviewing when I updated my website and then nothing before that until the last time I was interviewing.
Also, I chose to have a family and that takes effort, time and precedence over hobbies for me. If you also made that choice and you can code full time, have a healthy relationship with your wife and kids and still find time to have hobby code projects, all power to you. I don’t have the energy to open the laptop back up and get into something by the time the kids are in bed and I’ve spent some time with the wife. I’m not staying up into the night so a recruiter can glance at a chart and judge me to be a good or bad dev by how green it is.
How do I improve my skills over time? Tbh if the company I’m working for doesn’t allow me to block out a couple of hours to half day a week for learning I’m at the wrong company. I read, follow along with tutorials, experiment and think about how what I’m learning could be applied to the product I work with. Then if an opportunity to apply it comes along, I take it and either fail fast or bring something new, of value to the table.
Yup, the chart still goes green with contributions to private company repos, but those contributions also ain’t from my personal GitHub account, they’re from the one linked to my work email and I imagine they’ll close that account pretty quickly when I leave. Idk how that works tho, I only worked in one team in my whole dev career that seriously uses GitHub as source control, and they’re being moved to ADO as we type. GitHub is the go to for FOSS, but I don’t work in FOSS, I work in enterprise software and there’s much better enterprise git providers than GitHub (imho, ymmv). You can even throw the question back “do you actually use github here? If so can you tell me what lead you to go with that instead of other source control providers?” or side step it “I don’t really use github but I’m experienced in Azure DevOps and Team Foundation Server plus I’m fluent in git command line so I’ll be able to skill up in GitHub specifics pretty quickly if I need to”. Interviews are two way streets, I’m interviewing a company as much as they’re interviewing me, I have standards on where I’ll choose to work.
If you want a portfolio, I’ve got one, it’s on my website, the url of which is on my cv. Knock yourself out, sign up if you like, it’s public. I even updated it just for you last week.
Y’know why recruiters ask to see your github? Because they read in a book or a blog somewhere that that’s what they should ask when interviewing developers. 21 year old graduate developers looking for their first junior position, sure, maybe. That isn’t all devs tho.
Well, some people regard coding as a hobby…
Sysadmining is a lifestyle
I’d love to see recruiters who recruit in their free time, or surgeons who perform surgery in their free time.
…or surgeons who perform surgery in their free time.
I suspect surgeons doing surgery in their off hours wouldn’t be just weird, but also very creepy.
Has GitHub actually done anything negative? Your comments really just sound like fear mongering, I can’t see any actual issues.
What is the bloat you’re referring to? The UI is clean and simple. Navigating and searching code is intuitive. The issue tracker is basic but reliable. Releases are clear. GitHub Actions are complex but featureful and incredibly useful. GitHub Packages are basic but useful. GitHub Copilot is damn impressive.
They scanned open source repos and made an LLM out of it. Now companies can profit from open source code without contributing back to the ecosystem. The only contribution they make is the money they pay to Microsoft for Copilot. So Microsoft is profiting from OSS code and stifling its community.
Does this outweigh the free hosting of the code? IDK
I write open source code because I want tools to exist that make the world better, coding AI allow me to make better tools faster so I’m very happy if they used some of my code to train it.
I’ve saved hours of research and key poking thanks to AI, these early ones are just the start especially as people use them to help make everything needed to create better ones. We’ll get to the point where writing a new floss tool will be as easy as describing it briefly.
We’re going to need a replacement for github pretty soon.
There are many good replacements, you just need to stop using Github :)
Some examples: Forgejo/Gitea (self-host or hosted eg. codeberg.de), Gitlab (self-host or hosted), Sourcehut (self-host or hosted eg. sr.ht)
monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
GitHub is not a monopoly: it has competition. If you’re upset about it’s market share, switch to GitLab, Bitbucket, or host your own instance. If you’re upset about people not being aware of the other options, be an advocate and spread awareness of the alternatives.
