[mikemcquaid]

I left GitHub earlier this year after a decade. I’ve seen mockups, hack week projects and proof of concepts of this for the last 5 years (at least). A lot of engineers there knew this is the future that PRs need but GitHub at this point seems organisationally incapable of delivering these sorts of large improvements (Microsoft is perhaps partly but definitely not wholly to blame for this). Instead, they are midway through porting Rails views to use React, keeping most pages looking identical while introducing bugs and regressing previous usability improvements on a weekly basis. A real shame.

[0xblinq]

> Instead, they are midway through porting Rails views to use React, keeping most pages looking identical while introducing bugs and regressing previous usability improvements on a weekly basis. A real shame

I predicted this the moment I saw the React dev tools icon going blue when browsing GitHub. My comment (which I can’t find right now, I’m on my phone) was along the lines of them going the “Reddit way”. A totally worse experience for the end user just for the happiness of the React fanboys working there.

I already can’t stand the code browsing UI, which randomly closes or open a sidebar as you navigate back, or the search input which doesn’t even look good to me. What a total shame they’re messing it up so badly. GitHub had one of the best UIs in my opinion, and they’re just messing it up for the sake of keeping some devs happy.

[0xblinq]

Replying to myself because I can't edit: Found my comment about this from 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33583737

Not that this has any merit, as it could be seen from far away by anyone with > 5 years experience in this field.

And this just will just get worse, specially for end users. Let's see where we're in 10 months from now.

[jen20]

This would explain something else too, probably: a few years ago I did a call with some GH folks talking about the idea of making the commit message applied to a squash merge part of the review itself.

Apparently this was very common feedback and I know that at least five other people who were maintaining large scale open source at the time gave it that week too. It’s never gone anywhere though, and as a result I have to disable all workflows except “rebase and merge” for every repo…

[fahhem]

This is a feature of Reviewable.io, there's a system file called Commits where you can comment on the commit titles and descriptions!

[Joky]

You can configure "squash&merge" to use the PR title and description for the commit message now, which makes it reviewable!

[als0]

Wow, why would they spend so much energy rewriting Rails code into React?

[0xblinq]

Fashion and trends followed by new hires, most likely.

[lozenge]

Someone likely saw it as a good chance to "take over" more of the tech team headcount.

[rapnie]

Maybe to go all-in on Blocks. https://blocks.githubnext.com