"Second, GitHub provided easy discoverability and a network effect that allowed projects to become popular very quickly. README pages made it fast and easy for a developer to describe their project. Forks and stars showed which projects were gaining popularity and proving useful. Activity was easily tracked, and lively repositories could be identified. As more developers joined and contributed, the virtuous cycle of the network effect took hold. Suddenly code was appearing everywhere, bugs were being fixed, and popular projects were becoming de facto standards."
"Third, GitHub provided a social network for developers. Thanks to profile pages, contribution graphs, and easily searchable histories, developers were able to establish a professional history and reputation online. A developer's resume wasn't complete without a link to their GitHub profile. Open source contributions became an easy way for early-career developers to establish themselves and demonstrate experience and skills when job seeking. A developer without a GitHub page became like a designer without a portfolio."
GitHub provided discoverability, README pages, forks, stars, and activity tracking that let developers find, evaluate, and adopt projects quickly. Network effects from increased contributions accelerated project popularity, led to widespread code reuse, rapid bug fixes, and emergence of de facto standards. GitHub functioned as a social network through profiles, contribution graphs, and searchable histories that enabled developers to build online reputations and professional histories. Open source contributions became a visible way for early-career developers to demonstrate skills during job searches. The combination of Git and GitHub shifted open source from a scattered movement to the dominant software development model.
Read at InfoWorld
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]