[OJFord]

This is awesome. I absolutely love <company>engineering blogs like this.

There's no real reason for companies to educate external devs/hobbyists/students like this, but some do, and it's really awesome.

[artursapek]

The reason is recruiting, and it's effective.

[OJFord]

Because people read it and think "hey that sounds cool, I want to work there"?

[sophacles]

Pretty much.

There are second order effects as well. Having a good tech blog that talks about this stuff gains the company mindshare amongst developers. If, as in in the case of github, the developers (etc) are the customer, then the translation to marketshare is pretty straight-forward.

When developers (etc) are not the target audience, they still get warm-fuzzies about the company and it gains word of mouth, and non-tech who seek out a recommendation from their friends, will hear about the company with the good blog. Usually in the form of "Oh yeah, there are a couple of alternatives, but the tech at $X is top notch, look hard at them".

[OJFord]

Hm yeah, that makes sense. So it's not the case that "[there are] no real reasons" - but I still think it's awesome, and learn a lot/see the applications of stuff learned elsewhere in them.

[acdha]

Or, perhaps even more importantly, “they really seem to know what they're doing. I'm going to put my company's projects there”.

If you sell developer tools, this is _way_ more effective than an ad campaign because it's completely genuine.