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by audleman 3554 days ago
Are you saying instead of having Github, we should all be hosting our own Git repos?

> But it is beginning to creak. GitHub faces scaling challenges,

I don't agree that Github facing scaling issues means the web is creaking. More like old wooden boats are being replaced by big, sturdy battleships. I think the web is getting stronger thanks to engineers facing the challenges coming their way.

> I am frustrated that some people are on whatsapp and some slack and some telegram, and I cannot track who is talking to me.

If you're annoyed by people messaging on you through multiple platforms, it seems the solution would be to only have one provider. But you earlier call that "what is wrong with the web today," and that we should have distributed systems.
2 comments
lifeisstillgood 3554 days ago
>>> Are you saying instead of having Github, we should all be hosting our own Git repos?

Well, yes. That's the point. It was designed as an entirely distributed setup. It's crazy that in order to post a message to my neighbours I have to send data to Facebook in SV and just as crazy that two devs on the same team need to write their code commits in a load balanced mega server in ... Err ... Washington? Wherever.

And I don't mind having lots of clients but I object to no open standards, incompatible and frequently unavailable APIs and lack of control over my messages and how they are dealt with. I want procmail for messaging platforms ! And I want a pony !

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josegonzalez 3554 days ago
No one is forcing you to use github or facebook. I host my own gitlab installation for certain private repositories and I still send emails to some people when coordinating outings.
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lifeisstillgood 3553 days ago
I Am not feeling forced to use it. I use it because it is easier for me as an individual developer. I use readthedocs because they have better uptime than my own servers.n All the reasons i use GitHub are good choices for me.

I get the economics of centralised vs decentralised service provision - it's just ironic that GitHub is facing load balancing problems precisely because they have taken a distributed technology and made it, de facto, a centralised technology.

We can imagine a perfect storm of GitHub going down just as someone pulls a vital package from npm and Google losing jquery CDN; all Of a sudden the web will stop working.

It's amazing how fragile we can make a system designed to be resilient - I presume there is a real cost with keeping things distributed that a good economist could explain to me

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jstimpfle 3553 days ago
Multiple platforms != distributed

Yes, multiple platforms is overhead. That's why I mostly use mail, basically never IM, even for the most short-lived or informal conversations.

It's no problem at all for me having email conversations with people whose mailboxes are hosted at a diverse set of providers.

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