top | item 23337705

GitHub is experimenting with personal READMEs

132 points| benjaminjosephw | 5 years ago |twitter.com | reply

104 comments

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[+] deft|5 years ago|reply
This is great, yet another place I have to repost my resume/portfolio/blog to satisfy the trend-following recruiters and hirers... Maybe I'll just do this

    # [CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS](https://mysite.tld)
[+] koolba|5 years ago|reply
Bonus points if you make it a redirect loop so they get sucked into a never ending void.
[+] ken|5 years ago|reply
When MSFT bought them, I predicted they would pivot to adding features I don’t care about. I was right. They went from the best support I’ve ever seen (report an issue, get a personal email asking for details, see it fixed) to the worst (not touching a single feature I find worthwhile).

There’s about a thousand things I wish they would fix or add before this. They still don’t allow videos so every screencast demo on GitHub is still a giant GIF, right?

I used to like GitHub so much I paid out of pocket even when I was unemployed. Now it’s on my list to check out GitLab again. Companies don’t know when to stop. It’s like they created the bicycle and add another wheel every year as an improvement.

[+] tourist2d|5 years ago|reply
"GitHub is adding too many dumb features, btw please support my use case of having videos in my repo"
[+] arch-ninja|5 years ago|reply
Search has been broken since last November and it's impossible to select text when reading files in the browser anymore because they checked a JS-powered intellisense feature in. Now I usually just checkout the repository and use ripgrep to search for code.
[+] natfriedman|5 years ago|reply
We’re working on the video upload feature, which we agree is needed. What else would you like to see us do?
[+] faizmokhtar|5 years ago|reply
It could be a low hanging fruit that can be easily picked up.

I'm certain they have more designers or developers working on other features as well.

I remember a few years ago people were saying Github development seems to be stuck due to legacy issues and they couldn't compete with Gitlab in terms of features.

[+] numbsafari|5 years ago|reply
I see this in the context of TripleByte attempting to take on LinkedIn.

MS owns LinkedIn. This very much looks like an effort to turn GitHub profiles into LinkedIn-style profiles.

This is not going to be pretty.

[+] zeta_|5 years ago|reply
Except this one is opt-in and it was a feature request from the community
[+] boromi|5 years ago|reply
I'm not a fan of turning GitHub into social media. Please GitHub don't go down this route.
[+] rhn_mk1|5 years ago|reply
GitHub is already social media. What else is the star system, the network of forks, the profile bio and the ability to comment?
[+] hampelm|5 years ago|reply
The original tagline for GitHub was "Social Coding"
[+] soulclap|5 years ago|reply
I remember when GitHub used to have private messaging. I liked that feature. It was an easy and unified way to get in touch with other coders on there and felt less intrusive than sending them e-mails out of the blue (or opening issues for the sake of communication, as some do).
[+] ViViDboarder|5 years ago|reply
Turning into? It’s always been that. That’s actually one of the reasons it’s been successful.

They are just leaning into it more.

[+] Jonnax|5 years ago|reply
Didn't they have some feature years ago where you could tag people. And people took it as an opportunity to harass?
[+] spv|5 years ago|reply
Please add math support in github markdown. Something real users need.

Stop trying to make it a social network.

[+] natfriedman|5 years ago|reply
We're definitely going to add math support to GitHub markdown.
[+] jcelerier|5 years ago|reply
github being a social network is the main reason of its success.
[+] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
I'd rather that they supported a standard like MathML or LaTeX.
[+] fermienrico|5 years ago|reply
I don't like Emojis in my documents. I think they are distracting. Tools like Notion is actively promoting it like this new Github profile docs. Does anyone else feel the same? :-)
[+] dhritzkiv|5 years ago|reply
I suppose the answer is to simply not use Emoji in your documents.
[+] O_H_E|5 years ago|reply
When being overused and thrown in as plain decoration, yes. But I gotta admit, sometimes they do convey complex emotions no easily communicated over text.

Disclaimer: I am on the younger side on the age spectrum.

[+] codezero|5 years ago|reply
It's funny. I feel the same, but mainly because I feel like I have no instinct for the aesthetic.

I quite like how it looks, but it enrages me that if I try to do it, it ends up more gaudy than when I read others' docs :)

[+] jonchurch_|5 years ago|reply
There are a lot of commenters sharing their opinions of what they don't like abut Github’s interface. It is true there are a lot of quirks and warts in what is a site many of us spend a lot of time on.

Ive found browser extensions have been a great way to augment and customize my Github experience, bringing quality of life improvements that Im grateful to have every day.

My top two favorites are:

Refined Github [1] -- huge collection of quality of life improvements. e.g. always sort issues/PRs as most recently updated first, when recently pushed to a branch show a button on project page (or upstream of fork) to open a PR based on that branch, quicklink to most reacted to comment on an issue page. Also provides a surface to inject custom CSS for personal tweaks.

Octolinker [2] -- Turns require/import/include paths in files into hyperlinks to that file or repository. I use this every single day to navigate code in projects.

I know that extensions aren't a panacea, but personally I have found them be very valuable to my workflow.

[1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github

[2] https://github.com/OctoLinker/OctoLinker

[+] liminal|5 years ago|reply
Some time ago there was an article posted with a proposal for redesigning the Github UI [1]. I thought it was mostly great, but it got roundly panned on HN. In general my takeaway was that people don't like change, even when it benefits them. Was unfortunate, especially from a crowd that's supposedly all about technological improvement.

[1] https://tonsky.me/blog/github-redesign/

[+] jorams|5 years ago|reply
> when recently pushed to a branch show a button on project page (or upstream of fork) to open a PR based on that branch

This is actually a default feature. You don't even have to refresh the page for it to show that bar.

[+] charlieegan3|5 years ago|reply
Sad to see such a negative reaction here.

We have something similar internally - we call them personal user manuals. They explain how we like to work (e.g. communication preferences), and a little bit about ourselves.

We ask new joiners to write theirs when they join. They make a good introduction to the company and can provide guidance when wondering how best to interact with others.

[+] httgp|5 years ago|reply
I for one am looking forward to this — I’d love to use it as my resume.
[+] davnicwil|5 years ago|reply
A great piece of advice I heard I think from @patio11 is that you should really just host your own resume rather than letting a GitHub/LinkedIn/etc profile be your primary resume.

Why? Because context is powerful. When people are viewing your resume, you want 100% of their focus on you, and you want to present yourself in exactly the way that's best for you.

You don't want to present yourself within the context of another org's branding, site layout, etc, which by definition won't be optimised for you, and also syphons off some of that attention you want focused on you (as the most obvious example, say if the top bar has unread notifications).

The irony is with Github, hosting an HTML resume 'on' Github is possible and really easy already via GH pages. It's what I do :-) https://davnicwil.com/cv/

[+] meddlepal|5 years ago|reply
I like the idea... a bit concerned about the future potential that there is an expectation developers have a GitHub personal README (err "resume") tho. That's just not practical for a lot of folks either due to time, interest, or contractual reasons.

On the other hand, most profession's do have portfolio's and other mechanisms to share work with new potential employers. For some reason developer's seem to think a hiring decision should be made entirely on a a handful of 1 hour interviews conducted in a single day when their work will usually have massive direct impact on the companies product.

I think there's mostly positives to this and some downsides.

[+] dundercoder|5 years ago|reply
IMO - People are already viewing your github profile and making judgments, might as well be able to personalize what they see.
[+] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
I suspect you will soon see a project on github that will export your LinkedIn to read me format and vice versa.

Maybe even a git hook to do it automatically.

[+] diminish|5 years ago|reply
I think soon your github, vs code editor and windows 10 login will be connected with your linkedin profile.
[+] SingAlong|5 years ago|reply
This looks nice. I’m looking forward to using this as a page/list of blog posts/links.
[+] randormie|5 years ago|reply
I currently try to convey my (code) interests by pinning my favorite repositories on my profile, but this personal README is a ton more expressive. Looking forward to this!
[+] devmunchies|5 years ago|reply
its like my own personal space. they should call this feature myspace.
[+] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
Time to dust off my CSS skills.
[+] neatze|5 years ago|reply
This, and I do not like it.
[+] souterrain|5 years ago|reply
They’ve rediscovered .plan files?
[+] robotron|5 years ago|reply
That was my first thought also: .plan with MD
[+] Jefro118|5 years ago|reply
This is interesting move - I'm surprised they haven't done things like this earlier. The pinned repos was never a great way to provide an introduction since it lacks too much context. I've been experimenting with my own project [0] to get much more info out of GitHub profiles to demonstrate one's skills by generating portfolio sites, but if GitHub does a good job with this it might make my solution somewhat redundant.

[0] - https://www.profiled.app

[+] dreamcompiler|5 years ago|reply
My first, automatic reaction to this was a whole-head eyeroll. Great. Now Github wants to be a social network.

My second thought was "Hey if I used this I could delete my stupid Linkedin account."

[+] cordite|5 years ago|reply
I kinda like this, a way to make the profile more personable rather than a vanity graph and select repos.

But this emoji fascination is beyond me.

[+] naruhodo|5 years ago|reply
Like it or not, people use github for self-promotion.

It's not at all unusual for recruiters to ask about your github profile. The code repositories are the resume. The personal README is the cover letter.

[+] renewiltord|5 years ago|reply
Reminds me of personal user pages on Wikipedia. Very cool. I like it.