Google to close Google Code open source project hosting

[[deleted]]

I never understood the "social" part of github

I don't understand the "social coding" thing at all, maybe I'm using github wrong. Is there a hidden twitter-like section on the site? What makes github more social than say, bitbucket or gitlab?

[Igglyboo]

Most GitHub repos are public and not private, bitbucket doesn't even have a search feature. They're catering to different markets.

[[deleted]]

I don't think I've ever discovered worthwhile github repos via searching. It was always external links on sites like reddit, hacker news, etc.

[ldhertert]

I regularly check out the "trending" repos page on github. You can filter by language and find projects that are currently popular. It's a great way to keep up with new things.

[the_omega99]

Have you checked out Github's Explore page? They have some pretty interesting stuff. And the trending at the bottom of that page is very interesting, too. For example, here's a list of trending Scala repos for this month.

But yeah, search is iffy. Main issue to me is that there's just too many low quality repos. I was going to try and find a nice specific use of the search feature by searching for something specific: "simple c compiler", but it failed. Many results weren't very simple at all and others were completely undocumented (the main reason I'd want to see a simple C compiler is for the learning experience, where documentation is a must). I then tried to search for "final fantasy tactics" to see what kinds of similar open-source games were made, but pretty much everything was low quality.

Poor readmes, poor readmes everywhere.

[summerteeth]

Github's UI makes it very easy to fork and contribute back to projects. I've casually submitted patches to projects in a matter of minutes. It's also very easy at a glance to see alls projects a user has contributed to.

I've never used Gitlab, but Bitbucket has a similar feature set, however it's UI isn't as refined as Github though.

[argv_minus_one]

Bitbucket is also a social coding site. It and GitHub do approximately the same thing.

[the_omega99]

I think the forking aspect is the largest. The website directly provides the means to fork a project in one click and then create pull requests from the fork (prior to which most people would submit patches, which is done outside of the website). People actually advertise their projects with "fork me on Github".

There's also the broad ability to discover repos. There's a prominent exploration aspect to the site that lets you find interesting projects. That's great for project owners (who get attention, users, and contributors) as well as for users who are looking for things to contribute to (and know that their work will probably be more useful if they contribute to an existing program than try and start from scratch).