I'd agree, but the caveat is that github is primarily about an interface for source control and collaboration between developers for projects. The release page is really just an also-ran in terms of importance.

Excel has a bad UX for people who want to use it to make art

not only the ux, some devs make it absurdly confusing to find a binary.

I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but there's this one niche app.

their github releases at one point were YEARS out of date, they only linked to the current version in seemingly random issue reports' comments. And the current versions were some daily build artefacts you could find in a navigation tree many clicks deep in some unrelated website. And you'd better be savvy enough to download a successfully built artefact too. And even then the downloaded .zip contained all kinds of fluff unnescessary for using the app.

The app worked fine, sure, but actually obtaining it was fairly tricky, tbh.

GitHub has bad UX for a lot of things

That's not really what it's designed for though

I swear they move the link to release page every few months.

I fixed it for them

I think you're on to something haha

A lot of projects don't use it or forget to update it for multiple versions so you probably aren't missing much.

If you use it as a developer you don't care about the releases page. You want to see the code and for latest version you just need the git tags. But I've also used it for stuff I just needed to run on my machine as an end-user. And for those you turn to the Releases page. That's where pre-built binaries go.

But it also depends on the target audience. Some projects, even if meant more as software to run than code to import, still target mainly developers or tech users in general and will not have more than just instructions on how to build them. Others, say a Minecraft launcher, or some console emulator, will target a wider audience and provide a good Releases page with binaries for multiple platforms.

If there isnt a link in the readme.md I could be lost for days.

about how the project's executable is an obvious Trojan

Which I bet was only obvious to him when Norton Antivirus told him

Meh, maybe 10% of a single generation at most know how to use computers. Technically savvy millenials vastly overestimate how technically savvy other millenials are.

It doesn’t kinda feel that way, doesn’t it?

A lot of schools have Chromebooks too. You're not doing any serious business, CAD, Photoshop, or programming there.

I have a feeling that the OS in question here is Windows. Not as bad as Apple's walled garden, but similar results.

I forgot how much I hated that commercial. And I hate even more that it was ahead of its time.

Chatgpt, of course..

AI for the heavy lifting, some poor overworked freelancer overseas fixes issues and refines, and then maybe, mayyyybe a domestic review team of senior coders for pen/security testing.

!remindme 2030

"AI"

People wrote software before there's was computers for them to grow up with. They'll be able to develop these skills in university's, colleges, coding courses or online.

I grew up prior to the app world. My exposure to computing during highschool was word, excel, access and once we used PowerPoint. Nothings changed, people are only taught what the teachers know.

Skillsets skillsets, when the darn thing needs jre older than the one you have installed or tiger.dll is missing, what do you do … ?

where's waldo.dll when you need them?

If they pay me more, I'll make them one in Visual Basic and trace an IP address.

Oh absolutely, anyone in a red team position is more than capable of running a few command lines. The guy is without a doubt trying to stalk someone

Why would you even need a script for that? Like, what functionality is it actually providing that can't be done through the app / web UI

my application projects don’t include node versions

Well, that's just a better security stance against supply-chain attack right there.

I hate git and all it's unintuitive commands.

Git isn't properly taught. I've studied programming both in college and in a boot camp, and both times they rushed right over git, showing only the bare essentials. This left me unprepared for the real world. I didn't know how to do basic stuff like exclude files or even undo changes.

It's so complex, they really should have a separate class for it.

Why do I have to have python installed in order to use it? Why don't you bundle all the dependencies with the download?

Does “got clone *” work or anything that would?

As a CS student, yes absolutely. These people then complain about paper exams and when the code gets complex enough for the AI to make mistakes. I've seen a few people drop out in programming 2, and my web 1 class was decimated because we were doing more than leetcode exercises. It's a real problem that so many people are using it as a crutch.

Why are you surprised?

This is literally the third year of the diploma. This is not even source control. This is literally installing the software provided with the instructions provided

But as I seen both, networking is easier than programming IMO. Networking is mostly knowing a lot of things to be able to reuse that knowledge Programming is actually creating things and solutions to problems, and is more complicated, at least for me. But I still prefer it as I actually feel mentally challenged (pun intended)

HOLD YOUR CHILD CAPTIVE WHILE THEY CRAP THEIR DAKS

It's to prevent a small child from falling arse-first into the crapper and causing a blockage.

Look at that grin. Those straps are for YOUR protection

Tbf the released page can be hard to notice/find, a lot of projects who use it simply have links on the main page to it because a portion of users will fail to navigate there

This isn't the job of a Git repository nor is it for GitHub, this is an issue for developers which shouldn't use it as their main download way.

The download zip is not meant for the average person and frankly useless for most projects. I don't know why you expect a Git repository to explain to you that bare code isn't compiled or plug and play? How would GitHub know other than you informing them that the app isn't for Windows?

I don't think you understand the concept of what Git and GitHub even are and their intentions.

Gatekeeping OSS is a thing now?

Can you explain what this does? I’m thinking something along the lines of reverting all commits except the very first one?

At this point r/ itself is a joke community.

The original text was not on github.

Saw it on copypasta yesterday. It's possible this is an old screenshot and I could've seen the repost.

EDIT : seems I'm wrong and this is just an old picture.

I think the entire point is that this stops people from filing a bunch of stupid tickets saying the .exe didn't work on their iPhone or some shit.

That guy is not asking, is demanding. I use lots of open source software and am aware that the developer is often stretched thin. If I can't help with the project (can't say I have in the past two decades) I want them focused on what is important and what probably keeps them motivated, writing code and adding cool features. If they have time, fix bugs. If there is more bandwidth, write documentation.

Not wasting time making an executable for every OS out there because some ingrateful asshole is too lazy to figure out how to read instructions in plain English.

That's on point. They should have a restaurant there at least. Smh. /S

To strain your metaphor, I think what most people are looking for is a sign that says "FOOD COURT THIS WAY ->"

If they just had a prominent link to "download latest stable version" in a consistent place, people wouldn't be so confused (and devs wouldn't have to do extra work to try and make it obvious).

Not really, no. There's a releases section where the developer can upload an exe for example but it's really not easy to tell that that's where you need to go if you just want to use the program/script, etc and you're not a tech savvy person.

So yeah, the UI could be improved on that front.

It's more like going to a restaurant expecting them to make a recipe but instead they tell you to select this random list of things and then they cook it (like US Mongolian bbq places).

If you know what you're doing you get a good meal. If not? Ketchup on rice.

I know how to do it but I'm not selfish enough to forget how it was the first times. You won't convince me it's user friendly

What's the problem with github and what would you use to publish software or computer files instead?

That's just malicious compliance. They know they shouldn't provide easy access because it may increase accountability. It's silly

While it may have begun that way (and may still be the overwhelming use case, idk the breakdown) devs are using it for FOSS releases, and that’s where the ‘less literate’ crowd enters. Sourceforge was very simple to use, and had a consistent layout. GitHub wasn’t meat to be a SF replacement, but here we are having this discussion

Yes, and they come in three variants, apiQ, apiS and apiR. And I don't understand the difference.

All this really means is they grew up navigating digital spaces socially. I've discovered first hand that the generation at large has little-to-no knowledge of the technical workings of even the computers they use regularly, imo due to the "apple-fication" (one button? Really?) of digital devices. Most exclusively use their cell phone as their digital device, or a chromebook provided by their school, all of which have been streamlined to the extreme to "enhance" the user experience, but have in actuality given them absolutely zero-experience learning how to troubleshoot or incentive to dig into how their devices operate. I've had to walk teens through how to navigate the file directories on their laptops.

In the past, the only people to be "techies" (ie people seeking out spaces like the Internet) were ones willing and able to deal with hurdles and issues, and the window is apparently quiet narrow for people who grew up with tech (to an extent) and also had to learn how to handle issues like that. The majority of others are either those described above, or those that never saw tech as important or worth it (though we're also seeing the consequences of those people finding their way onto the "one-button" internet in meme/conspiracy addicted boomers).

Expecting people who grew up after the Internet was mainstream to all be developers is like expecting everyone who grew up in the 60s and 70s to be a mechanic

You made me chuckle. But let's all agree that learning to use git is a ball ache and isn't very intuitive. Throw repositories into the mix and lay people just aren't gonna get it. I think using git should be taught in highschool IT classes though, most people will never use it, but it will massively help those who do need to learn it.

Yeah, I've been messing around with LM Studio for a few weeks/months now and compared to the alternatives, that's about the easiest thing out there. Setup through Command Line seems to be the norm outside of that. I was just messing around with trying to install the ChromaDB plugin for LM Studio and ran into that issue of the command line again. Like I don't know if they're talking about just the generic Windows Command Line program, if Git needs to be installed, is it in a python environment or does python need installed, and the guides I've tried going through seem to just skip over these basic steps and just assume you already know exactly what they're talking about, that seems like a regular thing, just not enough preliminary explanation.

Like, I've had some experience with coding over the years in various languages, but I'm used to a certain amount of hand-holding for basic guides, something like, "You'll need this installed from here, go ahead and load up this thing, blah blah blah." In most of the tutorials I've been seeing for anything related to LLMs or AI image generators or whatever, there's just rarely any acknowledgement of complete newbies to the process, it's just assumed you know everything they're talking about already. I realize it's alot of copy/pasting and it's pretty straight-forward, but it feels like many guides are just glossing over really basic need-to-know info.