GitHub
GitHub
In some recent talks I make a reference to Conway’s Law named after Melvin Conway (not to be confused with British Mathematician John Horton Conway famous for Conway’s Game of Life nor to be confused with Conway Twitty) which states: Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. Many interpret this as a cynical jibe at software management dysfunction. But this was not Melvin’s intent. At least it wasn’t his only intent. On his website, he quotes from Wikipedia, emphasis...
Developers take pride in speaking their mind and not shying away from touchy subjects. Yet there is one subject makes many developers uncomfortable. Testing. I’m not talking about drug testing, unit testing, or any form of automated testing. After all, while there are still some holdouts, at least these types of tests involve writing code. And we know how much developers love to write code (even though that’s not what we’re really paid to do). No, I’m talking about the kind of testing where you get your hands dirty actually trying the application. Where you attempt to...
The other day I needed a simple JSON parser for a thing I worked on. Sure, I’m familiar with JSON.NET, but I wanted something I could just compile into my project. The reason why is not important for this discussion (but it has to do with world domination, butterflies, and minotaurs). I found the SimpleJson package which is also on GitHub. SimpleJson takes advantage of a neat little feature of NuGet that allows you to include source code in a package and have that code transformed into the appropriate namespace for the package target. Oftentimes, this is used...
As of today, I’ve been a GitHub employee for one year and I gotta tell you… Please forgive me a brief moment to gush, but I really love this company. I work with a lot of great people. Crazy people for sure, but great. I love them all. Just look at these crazy folks! I once told a friend that I’ve long had the idea to start a company that would be my ideal work environment. GitHub is better than that company. What Makes it Special? One of my co-workers Rob...
Next week my wife and I celebrate our tenth anniversary in Oahu with the kids. It’s been a great ten years and I’m just so lucky to have such a wonderful woman and partner in my life along with two deviously great kids. And what better way to celebrate an anniversary than to give a talk on Git and GitHub for Windows Developers!
UPDATE: Immediately after the talk we’re going to have a drinkup! Before I go further, I need you to soak in that logo for a minute. At first glance, it looks like it was...
Back in March of this year I had the honor and delight to give the opening keynote at CodeMania, a new conference in New Zealand. This conference was something special. I mean, just look at their beautiful lucha libre inspired site design. Although inexplicably, they switched to a pirate theme when it came to my profile image. Even so, it’s fun and the Twitter integration is a nice touch. It’s time for me to tweet something very inappropriate. On a personal level, this was a particularly special conference for me as it was the...
A couple weeks ago I had the great pleasure to speak at the Norwegian Developer’s Conference (NDC). This is my second time speaking at NDC. The first time was back in 2009 and it was a blast! I gave two talks this year. My slides and a video of each presentation are available as well. Git and GitHub for Developers on Windows GitHub.com is the place for open source developers to collaborate on their projects. But there's a perception that GitHub and Git are the domain of Mac and *nix users. Not so! In...
In my last blog post, I mentioned that GitHub for Windows (GHfW) works with non-GitHub repositories, but I didn’t go into details on how to do that. GHfW is optimized for GitHub.com of course, but using it with non-GitHub repositories is quite easy. One key difference is that you need to clone the repository to your local machine first following the instructions for your respective host. If your host offers an HTTPS git repository URL, use that one. For example, suppose you want to work on a project hosted on CodePlex.com. In my case, I’ll choose NuGet. The...
For the past several months I’ve been working on a project with my amazing cohorts, Paul, Tim, and Adam, and Cameron at GitHub. I’ve had the joy of learning new technologies and digging deep into the inner workings of Git while lovingly crafting code. But today, is a good day. We’ve called the shipit squirrel into action once again! We all know that the stork delivers babies and the squirrel delivers software. In our case, we are shipping GitHub For Windows! Check out the official announcement on the GitHub Blog. GitHub for Windows is the easiest and best way...
I recently gave my first talk on Git and GitHub to the Dot Net Startup Group about Git and GitHub. I was a little nervous about how I would present Git. At its core, Git is based on a simple structure, but that simplicity is easily lost when you start digging into the myriad of confusing command switches. I wanted a visual aid that showed off the structure of a git repository in real time while I issued commands against the repository. So I hacked one together in a couple afternoons. SeeGit is an open source instructive visual aid...
Next week Microsoft hosts its annual MVP Summit. So what better time for me to host my first GitHub Drinkup – MVP Edition at the Tap House Grill! Not an MVP? Nonsense! You are in my book, so show up! If you are an MVP, you’re still welcome to slum it with the rest of us schlubs. All the details are posted over at the GitHub Blog post. What is a “Drinkup” you ask? It’s pretty simple. It’s a meetup where we drink and share stories of valor in the face of code complexity....