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"GitHub" Is Starting to Feel Like Legacy Software
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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What does the author mean with "legacy"? I thought that meant "abandoned". Github is nowhere near abandoned. People keep flocking to it and giving it more power.
If it becomes too shitty to use, my guess is that the majority will still stay because of inertia. Regardless of what alternatives exist, the majority stays with the popular.
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Legacy to me does not mean abandoned, but the previous version that is still needed. It does not tell you if its "supported". Abandoned would be a software no longer in "supported" to me. But that does not say if its still needed today. So legacy and abandoned are similar, but not the same, only sometimes the same. Legacy software or hardware can be popular in usage too. In example old graphics cards like GTX 1070 are legacy and use legacy drivers. They are somewhat popular still. The official drivers from Nvidia still support this older graphics card, so they are not abandoned, only legacy.
This is what my definition of these words. I don't think Github itself is legacy nor abandoned. I personally am just a very simple Git user and use Github through the
gitcommand and for some tasks through the website of Github. It's fine for me and I don't care if someone calls it legacy or abandoned. It's not.When she says it's starting to feel like legacy software, I think she means parts of it seem to be falling into disrepair. Some things that once worked consistently and easily, like using the browser's built-in search, no longer do.
That isn't what legacy means.
But you can still understand the gist of the article even if it used that word differently.
The author's made at a new tech breaking an old feature. Seems more to me like a "I wish they kept things the same" than "I wish they changed some stuff around here". Quite the opposite of legacy.
It being the main point of the article bug being used incorrectly in the title is just confusing. That's comparable to somebody always mentioning "wolf" in an article, actually describing a hare and never saying what their definition of a wolf is.
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I totally get what you're saying, but wouldn't you rather discuss the content of the article than argue about definitions?
Sure, IMO github has had a subpar interface forever. I've always liked Gitlab's interface more. Github has felt behind Gitlab for a while and it feels like the major thing they have going for themselves are Github Actions and marketshare. The interface getting worse is no issue to me as I try not to use it anyway.
It also doesn't seem comprehensible to me that the author prefers Github's blame interface over every git GUI they've used. They don't even say what it is about the interface they find nicer.
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I really like GitHub's high contrast themes. But yeah, that's it. I recently moved my code to Codeberg. Have you tried it? I like GitLab too. That was my go to back when GitHub didn't offer free private repos.
Codeberg looks like a github clone from 2018 or so. I do hope that they take inspiration from other source forges and won't be afraid to experiment to go their own way.
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The meaning of words often varies with context.
Techical terms with specific meanings don't vary significantly based on context, because consistency is important in technical usage.
The author is complaining about how guthub is being poorly modernized, which is the opposite of legacy software. If she means 'something we choose use out of tradition' that isn't what legacy software means.
Every lexicographer I know would challenge that notion. (And I've had more than a few experiences in technical fields that challenge it as well.)
People sometimes express themselves using words that might not fit the discussed situation directly (at least not in the typical way), but do fit closely-associated experiences they've had. They use them because those are the words that come to mind at the time.
We could pedantically gatekeep their use of language and insist that their views/experiences are invalid because we don't like their choice of words...
...or we could try to understand them.
What a great point to make about language in situations that are not technical! Like how theory is used differently outside of scientific contexts, which is language naturally evolving.
But this is like someone trying to use the lay definition of theory, which is the equivalent of a hypothesis in acience, in a scientific context. A scientist saying "that is just a theory" to dismiss the theory of relativity in a scientific context would be rightfully corrected by their peers.
Using legacy software wrong is like using API to describe something other than an API.
You've made your opinion clear; restating it and slinging downvotes doesn't help anyone. Good day.
Legacy means outdated. Not [necessarily] unusable or unstable or insecure or needs to be updated. But feels old or outdated. Conforming to older standards or workflows.
Wikipedia matches my understanding:
Then I think the author also had a different understanding of the term, because he's complaining about new functionality breaking an old feature. Introducing new code is quite the opposite of legacy.
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