GitHub's Next Move: Turn Everybody Into a Programmer

mattydread23 writes: This interview with GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath and product VP Kakul Srivastava explains a little more what GitHub is planning for the future — and how the company is trying to live up to its $2 billion valuation. Basically, if every developer in the world uses and loves GitHub, the next logical step is to turn more people into developers. "Even today, Wanstrath says, there are journalists and scientists who are using GitHub to find, build, and share data-driven applications that assist with research or interactive projects. The goal, then, is to gradually make it a lot easier for anybody to get started on the platform. As more and more people get educated as programmers from an early age, Wanstrath wants GitHub to be the service of choice for the next generation to really get their feet wet."

Comments

Translation ...

[gstoddart]

and how the company is trying to live up to its $2 billion valuation

Sooner or later people will realize just how horribly overvalued we actually are, and we are desperately trying to do stupid things like turning everybody into a programmer so we can continue to prop up our overvalued company and continue to reap such awesome executive bonuses.

Honestly, WTF revenue do they have? I see so damned many companies being valued in the billions, and for what seems like no justifiable reason.

It's the .com era all over again ... "zomg, we have teh social" or whatever the daily buzzword is.

It's a great way to separate investors from their money. But I remain unconvinced any of these companies are actually worth anything in the billions.

Re:Translation ...

[TWX]

It's the .com era all over again ... "zomg, we have teh social" or whatever the daily buzzword is.

Yes it is. Lots of popular companies have either not figured out how to make a profit yet or have made their profits through means that were completely out of left-field.

There are three ways for an Internet company with no tangible products to make money as far as I can tell, the first is to charge the users for some service, the second is to present advertising to the user in exchange for money from the advertising entity, and the third is to collect statistics on the userbase and sell that data to others.

Github does not charge to host projects. Github therefore must use one of these three methods to make a profit if they don't start charging for use.

I do not understand the love for Github. Admittedly my direct experience with it was in the course of using a huge spaghetti-mess of a curriculum management program called Canvas, but I found it no easier than a traditional CVS repository and harder to use than the package management provided by my OS.

Re:Translation ...

[TWX]

Github does not charge to host projects. Github therefore must use one of these three methods to make a profit if they don't start charging for use.

It does: https://github.com/pricing

Only public projects are free. And this is IMO a fair model. If you want to hide your code from the public, it means in most cases that your software is closed source. And that usually means you make money with it, where its just fair to give github a small part of it, these are basic economic "supply chain" rules. Conversely, if your code is public, it most likely is open source as well. There is some public content on github which is not open source licensed, but most of it is.

And about learning git, it has a steep learning curve, but once you know it, its real fun. CVS isn't distributed, I really like git for its speed and features like git blame. Sadly many people think git == github.

If I want to hide my projects from the public I'm not going to put them on someone else's server.

Re:Translation ...

[SQLGuru]

This this this this.

If I want to share the code, I'll use one of the public repos. If I don't want to share the code, that includes sharing via a server I don't control. I still might use Git style repo (or not, there are plenty of options), but I would self host.

Re:Translation ...

[MightyYar]

If I want to hide my projects from the public I'm not going to put them on someone else's server.

Well, that's you. I'm not a security expert and I'm not a big corporation that can afford to hire one. So for me, it's probably more secure to use someone else's server.

Oh, this has fail written all over

[hyperar]

Basically, if every developer in the world uses and loves GitHub, the next logical step is to turn more people into developers.

If the starting point is false, then this has no way to succed.

Re:Oh, this has fail written all over

[Yunzil]

Yeah, I'm a developer, and I neither use nor love GitHub. Sorry.

Not this shit again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Seriously, STOP trying to make everybody a programmer. It's not going to happen, and it shouldn't happen.

Why not make everyone a plumber or a mechanic or an insurance agent? BECAUSE IT'S STUPID, just like trying to make everyone a programmer.

Adapt GitHub To Other Uses

[CastrTroy]

I think the next logical step is to adapt GitHub to do change management on other kinds of documents, not just source code files. It would probably help out a lot of students for them to learn how to manage all their essays and other assignments with a change management system. Working on group projects would be a lot easier if it was easier to share files and merge changes with people working on the same project.

Working with a big MS Word document with a group of people using the "track changes" feature is a lot more painful than sharing a software project between a bunch of developers. But it shouldn't be. There is a huge need for people in other fields to be able to collaborate on a document, and see how it has changed over time.

Just imagine if all the bills that were written were entered into a source control system with hourly commits before they were voted for in Congress. I would be much nicer if people were able to easily see what changed as the bill approached the floor for voting. It would be a lot harder to slip things in at the last moment.