[adeaver]

> It shows they have passion, drive, dedication and an eagerness to learn from others

No, all it shows is that they wrote some code and put it on a website.

The developer that has just a resume might be just as (or more) skilled that the one that uses github but for whatever reason can't post code up like that. To exclude someone simply because they don't have an active github is foolish.

However did you screen, interview, and hire people before github came along?

[codyb]

As someone currently looking for an entry level position in development work I agree with this. Currently I'm learning about cryptography and web security. There's not a lot of development work from that I can put on my github account. Especially since Matasano's Cryptography challenges which I've been slowly working through don't allow me to publicly display the challenges or my results. Does that mean I don't have as much drive as someone who's working on machine learning currently and can write a library and post it on github?

[smallsharptools]

Getting active on GitHub was important to me after interviewing last year at a couple of great places. I learned I was out of sync with the developers I wanted to work with. So I got more active on GitHub by sharing code I created which I thought was useful to others. And when I used other libraries I looked for ways I could improve on them and managed to get some Pull Requests accepted. There were lots of benefits. One great benefit is regularly reading code written by developers with more experience than you. And if you form relationships with these same developers and they start coaching through changes on their projects you can accelerate your learning. This work csn even lead to a job. Being active on GitHub is a distinct advantage for sure.

[smallsharptools]

These days an active GitHub profile gives a developer a distinct advantage. It helps them form relationships with other debs who can teach them so much, even by just reading their code and commit comments. I watch multiple projects just so I can read about the changes they made, what their thinking was and the changes to the code.

Even if you cannot post code does not men you cannot watch and clone projects so you can learn and stay aware of trends in the community. It keeps you sharp. And it better than any industry magazine out there.