If it’s just about aesthetics or how it makes you feel, then yes I agree because how it made you feel is a signal of whether it’s good. Code is not like this, code is about accomplishing a specific function.

It’s definitely getting better, but this isn’t the kind of thing that is going to change the world. It needs to be good at things that are much more entangled with the world for that.

The total lack of mention of the terminal bell in the article is weird. I think it needs to be addressed for the protocol to be taken seriously. More granular info sounds nice, but also nice is the simplicity of the bell.

2. Economics is a function of human behavior, not horse behavior. Economics is about coordinating human effort. Humans make economics, horses don’t. When economics change in a way that is bad for horses, the horses have no recourse. When economics change in a way that is bad for humans, the affected humans seek to change things.

It is shocking how much of a differentiator this is. You will discover that the software you’re already using is much more capable than you realized.

I think I’ll start a company called Shpoptify.

I am very unsurprised by this outcome.

People wonder why good software becomes bad, and it’s because the people who were good at engineering are often outmaneuvered by corporate-politics savvy people in a growing company. One of the best political moves in a company is to have a lot of people under you.

A couple years ago, an engineer I know who has always been a very poor performer and lacks initiative, but is friendly and non-confrontational, was hired by GitHub. It would not have been hard for GitHub to find a much better engineer, but this person would be an easy person to keep under a manager on a team who wouldn’t leave or make waves. That can be more important to some managers than skills.

> In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will.

I think you may be misunderstanding that many laws, even in fair, just societies, are intentionally designed to be flexible. The real world is so variable and messy that in many cases it isn't feasible for a law to be written such it can be unambiguously determined whether or not a specific action violated the law. Laws often rely on humans using context to judge whether something violates the spirit of a law, and in a just society, this is a good thing.

My point is that I don't believe the idea of "perfect rule of law" is sensible. Law is always necessarily a bit fuzzy and nebulous.

Of course some people take it too far. Of course there are reasons that the outages are occurring. But Microsoft wants GitHub to be a core, reliable pillar of the software world. Nobody's making them do that, they do it because it's good for them.