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by dpark 1646 days ago
The term “GitHub flow” existed prior to the Microsoft acquisition. The GitHub documentation history would be definitive, but you can find articles dating back to 2014 discussing GitHub Flow vs GitFlow. The acquisition was in 2018.

I agree that the name isn’t the best. It is however at least specific. “Trunk based development” encompasses a class of development processes. Although I don’t think I’ve ever actually described a real world process as “GitHub Flow” because almost no one knows what it specifically is anyway.

Disclosure: I work for Microsoft.

1 comments

Still just a cringey excuse to attach a trademark to a common practice, only sans the "Microsoft".

(OK, "git flow" was in a way even worse; that was Atlassian trying to usurp the generic "git" name for their own particular flow.)

> Still just a cringey excuse to attach a trademark to a common practice, only sans the "Microsoft".

I don't understand any of this sentence. Of course it's "sans Microsoft". It predated the acquisition by years.

But also I don't see the "cringe" here. "GitHub flow" was introduced as "this is what we do at GitHub". It is (or at least was?) the GitHib flow. https://githubflow.github.io/

> OK, "git flow" was in a way even worse; that was Atlassian trying to usurp the generic "git" name for their own particular flow.

Atlassian didn't even create GitFlow. https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

I don't understand this mindset that starts with assuming everyone is essentially a bad actor.

> I don't understand this mindset that starts with assuming everyone is essentially a bad actor.

It's pretty hilarious how some people use "I don't understand..." to imply that whatever it is they don't understand is bad, apparently completely oblivious to how it actually speaks more to their own powers of comprehension.

I often say "I don't understand..." because I'm willing to concede that sometimes my viewpoint is incorrect and I'm interested in correcting my views. Also because sometimes saying "I don't understand" is enough to get someone who holds an invalid/incorrect/unhelpful belief to restate their viewpoint clearly enough that they can see the problem with it (but of course that requires the other party to actually engage in a constructive way). And sometimes I say "I don't understand" because it's just more polite than insulting the the misinformed person.

For example, when I said "I don't understand" to your "Still just a cringey excuse..." comment, what I was really saying was "this sentence is poorly written and hard to understand, and you also clearly don't understand the context of where the term actually came from".

When I said "I don't understand" about assuming people are bad actors, I was really saying "you seem to be using the assumption of bad intent to mask your ignorance about the things you're talking about".

So now, I'll say I don't understand why you're nitpicking my use of the phrase "I don't understand" instead of responding to anything of substance I said.

By this of course I mean that it's clearly easier for you to attack my intellect than for you to self-reflect.