will this sure is gonna go well :sarcmark:
it almost feels like when Google+ got shoved into every google product because someone had a bee in their bonnet
flipside, I guess, is that we’ll soon (at scale!) get to start seeing just how far those ideas can and can’t scale
the strange thing about copilot is that it is about writing code but github isn’t a code-writing product (besides that text editor they made), it’s a version-control & repository product.
through my deeply-rabbit-holed-product-design-theoretical-perspective lens this translates as another manifestation of trying to make something that is concrete in purpose, which gives concrete accountability to the company behind it, into something general in purpose, which dilutes the concrete acocuntability over time.
“This is a public/private version-controlled repository product”
vs
“This is a collaboration and productivity product”
They’re trying to move up the value add chain.
An online version of VSCode backed by GitHub/Copilot is a natural goal for MSFT.
Add stuff from LinkedIn and presto you’re Nerd Salesforce.
pretty scary combination of properties. the social network that no one wants to be on, but everyone feels like they have to be on. the git host that is the standard for working in 99% of tech. and a GPT product that undermines the remaining enjoyable parts of coding
they own our reluctant compliance
even way before the Microsoft acquisition, a bunch of folks in my industry very foolishly saw GitHub as essentially code-driven LinkedIn. the idea that interacting on github could get you hired is why there are so many github accounts that have a shit-ton of achievements and forked repos, but if you dig in you’ll see that their open source contributions have been minor or generally negative (IE opening worthless PRs). taken as a whole, github is a massive boat anchor for the open source projects that rely on it — and whatever benefit they’ve gained from greedy drive-by contributors is likely to dry up soon, as a lot of those accounts have switched to spewing out cookie cutter AI code, which GitHub itself incentivizes
Bit of a tangent from your point but have you seen the recent spate of products that get “released” with a GitHub link, but the gh project itself is literally nothing but a branding landing area?
It irks me. I can’t be sure of their motivations as I haven’t asked why they’re doing it, but it strikes me as folks trying to have the reader/viewer make a false assumption (by way of proxy association)
yeah this will lead to the enshittification of github.
I think I give them too much credit as being responsible for version control. They’re more git hosts than anything else.
yeah so the funny thing is
they popularized git but because of them it also took forever for git-at-large to get even a little bit of quality growth
“if it’s good enough for github” applied - they were the popular bar. nothing needed to be better. so thus it stayed.
scale models that require centralisation and monopoly sure are popular though!
github has absolutely been rapidly enshittifying into a bad editor alongside this AI bullshit, to the point where it tramples vim bindings if you’re running a vim navigation plugin in your browser (and the option to turn off GitHub’s hotkeys is broken, of course) and constantly pops up editor-like UI bullshit like files sidebar regardless of how many times you’ve minimized or turned off those UI elements