Not my blog, but the author’s experience reminded me of my own frustrations with Microsoft GitHub.
I kinda got bored halfway through. From what I gather they’re salty that GitHub is switching to react? If that’s the issue then the headline is rather misleading isn’t it?
Surely legacy software is one that drifts into obscurity through lack of investment which is the polar opposite of GitHub rewriting their entire front end…
From what I gather they’re salty that GitHub is switching to react?
No, that is not the point at all. React is just an incidental detail she considered while trying to figure out what was going on.
It’s not an incidental detail when the text is almost entirely around the issue caused by this (mis-)use of react. The author doesn’t give another argument to support their view.
There seems to be a rando paragraph about AI as well,then it trails off that they’re looking for recommendations for git blame clients. I couldn’t really figure out how it was all GitHub’s fault or where the word legacy fits in.
There’s a difference between the author being mad that github is switching to react and the author being mad that github is misusing react. It is possible to use react without breaking browsers find in page functionality, which is ultimately what the author is frustrated about.
Crappy old websites that don’t behave properly with my browsers search function sound like legacy though. I agree the headline is worded a little strangely but I can see their point.
But their issue isn’t the old website. They’re complaining about the new version?
What does the author mean with “legacy”? I thought that meant “abandoned”. Github is nowhere near abandoned. People keep flocking to it and giving it more power.
If it becomes too shitty to use, my guess is that the majority will still stay because of inertia. Regardless of what alternatives exist, the majority stays with the popular.
When she says it’s starting to feel like legacy software, I think she means parts of it seem to be falling into disrepair. Some things that once worked consistently and easily, like using the browser’s built-in search, no longer do.
But you can still understand the gist of the article even if it used that word differently.
What does the author mean with “legacy”? I thought that meant “abandoned”.
Legacy to me does not mean abandoned, but the previous version that is still needed. It does not tell you if its “supported”. Abandoned would be a software no longer in “supported” to me. But that does not say if its still needed today. So legacy and abandoned are similar, but not the same, only sometimes the same. Legacy software or hardware can be popular in usage too. In example old graphics cards like GTX 1070 are legacy and use legacy drivers. They are somewhat popular still. The official drivers from Nvidia still support this older graphics card, so they are not abandoned, only legacy.
This is what my definition of these words. I don’t think Github itself is legacy nor abandoned. I personally am just a very simple Git user and use Github through the git command and for some tasks through the website of Github. It’s fine for me and I don’t care if someone calls it legacy or abandoned. It’s not.
Legacy means outdated. Not [necessarily] unusable or unstable or insecure or needs to be updated. But feels old or outdated. Conforming to older standards or workflows.
Wikipedia matches my understanding:
In computing, a legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, “of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system”, yet still in use.
Then I think the author also had a different understanding of the term, because he’s complaining about new functionality breaking an old feature. Introducing new code is quite the opposite of legacy.
There are quite a few things I don’t like about GitHub, but calling it legacy makes no sense.
I’ve got to say, seeing this:
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/network
instead of something like this:
https://fork.dev/blog/posts/collapsible-graph/
or this:
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/0*60NIVdYj2f5vETt2.png
feels pretty damn legacy to me.
Do either of those tools show logs across forks though? The first link is a totally different purpose than the second two.
I was thinking “oh, network view, this is gonna be a good example”, but that comparison isn’t.
What specifically do you think is legacy in that comparison? The coloring? The horizontal layout? The whitespace?
The network view lays out forks and their branches, not only [local]/[local+1-remote] branches.
I don’t know what IDE that miro screenshot is from. But I see it as wasteful and confusing. The author initials are useless and wasteful, picking away focus. The branch labels are far off from the branch heads. The coloring seems confusing.
bg looks like the same
What specifically do you think is legacy in that comparison? The coloring? The horizontal layout? The whitespace?
Note: I’ve changed the first link from https://github.com/cxli233/FriendsDontLetFriends/network to https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/network. Still the same view, but just a different repo to highlight the problems
- It’s in a small non-responsive box
- Ridiculous spacing
- If you want to see the commit messages, you either need to hover over a dot which increases visual scanning durations or you need to go to the commits view which only shows the commits on a single branch
- It doesn’t show commit messages
- It’s scrolling horizontally
- Branches cannot be collapsed
- Branches cannot be hidden/ignored
- No way to search for commits
- No way to select multiple commits
- Which also means no way to diff any specific commits together
- And there’s also no way to perform an action over a range of commits
- And there’s also no way to start a merge/merge-request/pull-request/etc… between two commits
- No way to sort by date/topologically
- Keyboard controls only moves view instead of selecting commits
I’ll stop here at 10 reasons (or more if you count the dot points), otherwise I’ll be here all day.
The network view lays out forks and their branches, not only [local]/[local+1-remote] branches.
Yes, but the others can do that while still being usable.
I don’t know what IDE that miro screenshot is from. […]
It’s gitkraken
[…] But I see it as wasteful and confusing. The author initials are useless and wasteful, picking away focus. The branch labels are far off from the branch heads. […]
The picture doesn’t do it justice, it’s not a picture, it’s an interactive view.
You can resize things, show/hide columns, filter values in columns to only show commits with certain info (e.g. Ignore all dependabot commits), etc… Here’s an example video.
[…]The coloring seems confusing.
You can customise all that if you want.
I am about to make you very happy.
alias gl='git log --graph --abbrev-commit --no-decorate --date=format:'\''%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'\'' --format=format:'\''%C(8)%>|(16)%h %C(7)%ad %C(8)%<(16,trunc)%an %C(auto)%d %>|(1)%s'\'' --all'
I don’t think this is an anti-React post, like the other commenters are implying.
This issue would occur when attempting to search any webpage with the web browser’s builtin search feature before the content has a chance to load in. This happens if the page requires JavaScript to load, which is the case with React apps.
The fact that the dates in the commit log are relative is stupid as shit. I am looking for the commit on March 14th at 3pm, not “last year”
edit: I’m an idiot 😭
edit 2: I just noticed that GitHub’s git log does show exact dates, only as headings though, not on each commit.
I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention at those “headings”, it looks just visual noise for me. But it looks like it should be the other way around, the headings should group commits time-related (7 months ago) and each commit should display its exact date.
