[mcrittenden]

I know that I've used GitHub's online editor a few times in situations where I see a quick typo I need to fix or want to make a one line change without the hassle of opening up the right directory, pulling the latest code, opening up an editor, etc etc.

[defuzz]

Sorry to hear that your IDE totally sucks - scnr.

It just depends on how you approach it, since I prefer to work local and upstream revisions with change notes, the main reason for revision control.

Given the featureset of github, it makes somehow sense, it just contradicts revision control to work directly in the repository.

[Oompa]

How does it contradict revision control? You can make a change and add a commit message all in 1 fell swoop. Then the next time you `git pull` that commit will be pulled down, just like any other.

As others have said, it's amazingly useful for quick and small changes. I don't see how that means someone's IDE sucks. I work on many projects and don't have all of them open in my IDE with the latest code always on my machine. This totally beats opening that project, running a `git pull` (which may take a while on an active project which I haven't visited in a bit), making the change, then committing and pushing.

On top of this, it's useful for non-technical people using these tools. Not everyone can move around through multiple repositories and pull down updates as easily as you or I. However, now they can easily help keep documentation up to date without leaving their browser.

[defuzz]

It makes sense if you are on the same social coding platform.

[mcrittenden]

It's not always for projects that you're actively working on--I've done it a lot for projects that I have never previously touched and wouldn't otherwise go to the trouble of cloning just for a small tweak, like a random open source project with a typo somewhere.

I don't think it's at all related to the editor I use (I use vim anyway so I don't think that's the issue).

Maybe it's worth considering that others prefer different workflows than you or have different use cases?

[drcongo]

Why are you so bothered that other people might like option to do this? Not everybody is you.

[defuzz]

I just understood the social development platform approach, that is on top of revision control and has its benefits when are developers are on one platform like bitbucket or github.