Github has become the number one place to show of your portfolio. Half of job postings these days encourage you to include a link to your GitHub profile.
Even for totally private repos, where popularity is not a factor, I continue to turn to Github because the UIs for both Bitbucket and GitLab continue to stand in the way of me easily getting shit done.
Focus on minimizing the friction to doing the most common tasks.
Ex. by far the most common thing I'm doing when going to a repo is looking up a file and doing something with it. So why isn't a file list the first thing which comes up when I open a repo?
Also, generally work on visual hierarchy more. GitHub does a great job of this and it makes the UI both efficient and pleasant. For example, you show the latest commit on a repo's homepage but it is very poorly differentiated from the content around it. This makes scanning the page much harder.
> Ex. by far the most common thing I'm doing when going to a repo is looking up a file and doing something with it. So why isn't a file list the first thing which comes up when I open a repo?
You can set this as default in your profile at /profile/preferences! Note that with GitLab 8.4 we now also have the quick-files finder which you can open from any page in a project by typing `t`[0].
We're working hard on improving the UI and UX and improving visual hierarchy and especially providing context to the current view is very high on our list. I hope the many changes in the last and upcoming releases will help, but any more specific feedback is very welcome.
In fact, GitLab 8.5, due the 22nd of this month, will heavily improve many views for mobile. This has been something we've been holding off on and we'll be slowing working more and more on it, as our UI matures.
GitLab 8.5 will have responsive views for most pages, but their functionality will be slightly limited compared to a full-browser, as we chose to hide certain elements (rather than a separate mobile view).
The mobile experience for github is not amazing either. It rearranges everything for no apparent reason and makes it harder or impossible to access what I want.
I hate to take impinge on your good nature, but you gave such good feedback to sytse I have to ask: what's getting in your way with Bitbucket? As a product company we're pretty focused on UX and spend a lot of time getting it right, so I'd love to hear any suggestions on how we can streamline it!
(I'm one of the founding engineers on Bitbucket Server, but more involved in Bitbucket.org these days)
this comment (not by me) is representative of my impression of atlassian:
Why has it been 7 years and nothing's been done? We're also considering moving everything to github, even if the price is higher... especially since the interface is more user friendly and there are far superior integrations available. It seems Bitbucket has been lagging in improvements :(
streamline your honesty about bb.org. turn it off or get serious. atlassian's handling of bb.org has turned me from "no opinion" to "avoid" on all their products.
Github has a great UI, probably my favorite web app of all time. Not even sure why, I just like it.
Their culture is definitely screwed up - or they wouldn't be in the news like this. Culture starts at the top, a few people, even just one person at the very top. You have to take responsibility for that. The "we can break all the rules" thinking is naive - you'll find some of those rules are there for a reason.
If you wanna develop software without profit motive (and VC investment) that's awesome, but don't think flat org structures are going to fly in a company over 100 people. I'm all for question authority, but profit motive needs organization, which needs order and hierarchies enforce that order.
If I want to see someone's work, and they provide a URL, I'm interested in the content, not the identity of the service it's hosted on. Gee, this sounds familiar...
For me, it emphatically is about the software.
Even for totally private repos, where popularity is not a factor, I continue to turn to Github because the UIs for both Bitbucket and GitLab continue to stand in the way of me easily getting shit done.