Every once in a while I come across a post that goes something like this: "Hey, I built this very cool tool that lets you do this really useful thing. [Link]" And sometimes (like 1 in 100 cases or so) I would really like to try that tool, because it would really be useful to me too. Or at least interesting or fun to try. (In contrast to all the other tools that are built for developers and not for ley persons like I am.) But then the link to that tool goes to github and I'm lost. 🤣
This is not a complaint. I just realise that there are so many amazing things going on "behind the scenes", or rather in various niches, that I won't have access to -- and people who aren't even interested in peaking behind those scenes or looking into those niches will never even know about. Technology, the web, digital communication holds such a huge potential. And only a fraction of us will ever tap it.
I also realise that I'm interested in way too many things. I don't understand most of them and never will, because my brain has limits. I should focus more on things I can understand. 😅
#internet #SocialMedia #technology
@theresmiling yeah agreed. its frustrating how many techies do not fully grasp that putting things on github means making it inaccessible to the overwhelmingly large majority of people
@laurenshof @theresmiling *Sometimes* (OK, not that often, but *sometimes*) the link to Github takes you to a readme page which, if you know to scroll down so that you can actually see it, tells you in comprehensible (to you) terms how to install and use the thing.
So next time you click on a Github link and see incomprehensible gibberish it just *might* be worth scrolling down to see if there are any useful instructions.
@TimWardCam @theresmiling respectfully, I'd like to reiterate my previous comment directly: this vastly underestimates the amount of tacit knowledge that you need in order to make sense of a github readme page, let alone execute the code. And I'm talking about github pages that do have properly formatted readme's with a stepbystep tutorials, even those should be treated as completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people
@laurenshof @theresmiling Yes, they're mostly crap - all I'm claiming is that
(1) VERY OCCASIONALLY there's a useful one, which
(2) the uninitiated will never see unless they know to try scrolling down.
The rule for designing web pages is that anything you actually want people to see has to be above the fold - Github readme pages do the exact opposite.