Show notes
Stephanie interviews Edward Loveall, a former thoughtbotter, now software developer at Relevant Healthcare. Part of their discussion centers around Edward's blog post on the tech industry's over-reliance on GitHub. He argues for the importance of exploring alternatives to avoid dependency on a single platform and encourages readers to make informed technological choices. The conversation broadens to include how to form opinions on technology, the balance between personal preferences and team decisions, and the importance of empathy and nuance in professional interactions. Both Stephanie and Edward highlight the value of considering various perspectives and tools in software development, advocating for a flexible, open-minded approach to technology and problem-solving in the tech industry. Relevant Let's make sure Github doesn't become the only option And not but Empathy Online Transcript: STEPHANIE: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Stephanie Minn. And today, I'm joined by a very special guest, a friend of the pod and former thoughtboter, Edward Loveall. EDWARD: Hello, thanks for having me. STEPHANIE: Edward, would you share a little bit about yourself and what you're doing these days? EDWARD: Yes, I am a software developer at a company called Relevant Healthcare. We do a lot of things, but the maybe high-level summary is we take very complicated medical data and help federally-funded health centers actually understand that data and help their population's health, which is really fun and really great. STEPHANIE: Awesome. So, Edward, what is new in your world? EDWARD: Let's see, this weekend...I live in a dense city. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it's pretty dense there. And a lot of houses are very tightly packed. And delivery drivers struggle to find the numbers on the houses sometimes because A, they're old and B, there is many of them. And so, we put up house numbers because I live in, like, a three-story kind of building, but there are two different addresses in the same three stories, which is very weird. And so [laughs], delivery drivers are like, "Where is number 10 or 15?" or whatever. And so, there's two different numbers. And so, we finally put up numbers after living here for, like, four years [chuckles]. So, now, hopefully, delivery drivers in the holiday busy season will be able to find our house [laughs]. STEPHANIE: That's great. Yeah, I have kind of a similar problem where, a lot of the times, delivery folks will think that my house is the big building next door. And the worst is those at the building next door they drop off their packages inside the little, like, entryway that is locked for people who don't live there. And so, I will see my package in the window and, you know, it has my name on it. It has, like, my address on it. And [laughs] some strategies that I've used is leaving a note on the door [laughter] that is, like, "Please redeliver my package over there," and, like, I'll draw an arrow to the direction of my house. Or sometimes I've been that person to just, like, buzz random [laughter] units and just hope that they, like, let me in, and then I'll grab my package. And, you know, if I know the neighbors, I'll, like, try to apologize the next time I see them. But sometimes I'll just be like, I just need to get my package [laughs]. EDWARD: You're writing documentation for those people working out in the streets. STEPHANIE: Yeah. But I'm glad you got that sorted. EDWARD: Yeah. What about you? What's new in your world? STEPHANIE: Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about a thing that you and I have been doing lately that I have been enjoying a lot. First of all, are you familiar with the group chat trend these days? Do you know what I'm talking about? EDWARD: No. STEPHANIE: Okay. It's basically this idea that, like, everyone is just connecting with their friends via a group chat now as opposed to social media. But as a person who is not a big group chat person, I can't, like, keep up with [chuckles], like, chatting with multiple people [laughter] at once. I much prefer, like, one-on-one interaction. And, like, a month ago, I asked you if you would be willing to try having a shared note, like, a shared iOS note that we have for items that we want to discuss with each other but, you know, the next time we either talk on the phone or, I don't know, things that are, like, less urgent than a text message would communicate but, like, stuff that we don't want to forget. EDWARD: Yeah. You're, like, putting a little message in my inbox and vice versa. And yeah, we get to just kind of, whenever we want, respond to it, or think about it, or use it as a topic for a conversation later. STEPHANIE: Yeah. And I think it is kind of a playbook from, like, a one-on-one with a manager. I know that that's, like, a strategy that some folks use. But I think it works well in the context of our friendship because it's just gotten, like, richer over time. You know, maybe in the beginning, we're like, oh, like, I don't know, here are some random things that I've thought about. But now we're having, like, whole discussions in the note [laughter]. Like, we will respond to each other, like, with sub-bullets [laughs]. And then we end up not even needing to talk about it on the phone because we've already had a whole conversation about it in the note. EDWARD: Which is good because neither of us are particularly brief when talking on the phone. And [laughs] we only dedicate, like, half an hour every two weeks. It sort of helps clear the decks a little. STEPHANIE: Yeah, yeah. So, that's what I recommend. Try a shared note for [laughs] your next friendship hangout. EDWARD: Yeah, it's great. I heartily recommend it. STEPHANIE: So, one of the things that we end up talking about a lot is various things that we've been reading about tech on the web [laughs]. And we share with each other a lot of, like, blog posts, or articles, various links, and recently, something of yours kind of resurfaced. You wrote a blog post about GitHub a little while ago about how, you know, as an industry, we should make sure that GitHub doesn't become our only option. EDWARD: Yeah, this was a post I wrote, I think, back in May, or at least earlier this year, and it got a bunch of traction. And it's a somewhat, I would say, controversial article or take. GitHub just had their developer conference, and it resurfaced again. And I don't have a habit of writing particularly controversial articles, I don't think. Most of my writing history has been technical posts like tutorials. Like, I wrote a whole tutorial on how to write SQL, or I did write one about how to communicate online. But I wasn't, like, so much responding to, like, a particular person's communication or a company's communication. And this is the first big post I've written that has been a lot more very heavily opinionated, very, like, targeted at a particular thing or entity, I guess you'd say. It's been received well, I think, mostly, and I'm proud of it. But it's a different little world for me, and it's a little scary, honestly. STEPHANIE: Yeah, I hear that, having an opinion [laughs], a very strong and maybe, like, a less popular opinion, and publishing that for the world. Could you recap what the thesis of it is for our listeners? EDWARD: Yeah, and I think you did a great job of it, too. I see GitHub or really any singular piece of technology that we have in...I'll say our stack with air quotes, but it's, you know, all the tools that we use and all the things that we use. It's a risk if you only have one of those things, let's say GitHub. Like, if the only way you know how to contribute to a code repository with, you know, 17 people all committing to that repository, if the only way you know how to do that is a pull request and GitHub goes away, and you don't have pull requests anymore, how are you going to contribute to code? It's not that you couldn't figure it out, or there aren't multiple ways or even other pull request equivalents on other sites. But it is a risk to rely on one company to provide all of the things that you potentially need, or even many of the things that you potentially need, without any alternatives. So, I wanted to try to lay out A: those risks, and B: encourage people to try alternatives, to say that GitHub is not necessarily bad, although they may not actually fit what you need for various reasons, or someone else for various reasons. But you should have an alternative in your back pocket so that in case something changes, or you get locked out, or they go away, or they decide to cancel that feature, or any number of other scenarios, you have greatly diminished that risk. So, that's the main thrust of the post. STEPHANIE: Yeah, I really appreciated it because, you know, I think a lot of us probably take GitHub for granted [laughs]. And, you know, every new thing that they kind of add to the platform is like, oh, like, cool, like, I can now do this. In the post, you kind of lay out all of the different features that GitHub has rolled out over the last, you know, couple of years. And when you see it all like that, you know, like, in addition to being, like, a code repository, you now have, like, GitHub Actions for CI/CD, you know, you can deploy static pages with it. It now has, like, an in-browser editor, and then, you know, Copilot, which, like, the more things that they [laughs] roll out, the more it's becoming, like, the one-stop shop, right? That, like, do all of your work here. And I appreciated kind of, like, seeing that and being like, oh, like, is this what I want? EDWARD: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you mentioned a bunch. There's also issues and discussions. You mentioned their in-browser editor. But so many people use VS Code, which, while it was technically made by Microsoft, it's based on Electron, which was developed at GitHub. And GitHub even, like, took away their other Electron-based editor, Atom. And then now officially recommends VS Code. And everything from deploying all the way down to, like, thinking about and prioritizing features and editing the code and all of that pretty much could happen on GitHub. I think maybe the only thing they don't currently do is host non-static sites, maybe [laughs]. That's maybe about it. And who knows? Maybe they're working on that; as far as I know, they are, so... STEPHANIE: Yeah, absolutely. You also mentioned one thing that I really liked about the content in the post was that you talked about alternatives to GitHub, even, like, alternatives to all of the different features that we mentioned. I guess I'm wondering, like, what were you hoping that a reader from your blog post, like, what they would get out of reading and, like, what they would take away from kind of sharing your opinion? EDWARD: I wanted to try to meet people where I think they might be because I think a lot of people do use GitHub, and they do take it for granted. And they do sort of see it as this thing that they must use, or they want to use even, and that's fine. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I want them to see those alternatives and have at least some idea that there is something else out there, that GitHub doesn't become just not only the default, but, like, the only thing. I mean, to just [chuckles] re-paraphrase the title of the post, I want to make sure GitHub does not become the only option, right? I want people to realize that there are other options out there and be encouraged to try them. And I have found, for me, at least, the better way to do that is not to only focus on, like, hey, don't use GitHub. Like, I hope people did not come away with only that message or even that message at all. But that it is more, hey, maybe try something else out and to encourage you to try something out. I'm going to A: share the risks with you and B: give you some actual things to try. So, I talk about the things I'm using and some other platforms and different paradigms to think about and use. So, I hope they take those. We'll see what happens in the next, you know, months or years. And I'll probably never know if it was actually just from me or from many other conversations, and thoughts, and articles, and all that kind of stuff. But that's what it takes, so... STEPHANIE: Yeah. I think the other fun thing about kind of the, like, meta-conversation we're having about having an opinion and, like, sharing it with the world is that you don't even really say like, "This is better than GitHub," or, like, kind of make a statement about, like, you shouldn't use...you don't even say, "You shouldn't use GitHub," right? The message is, like, here are some options: try it out, and, like, decide for yourself. EDWARD: Yeah, exactly. I want to empower people to do that. I don't think it would have been useful if I'd just go and say, "Hey, don't do this." It's very frustrating to me to see posts that are only negatives. And, honestly, I've probably written those posts, like, I'm not above them necessarily. But I have found that trying to help people do what you want them to do, as silly and maybe obvious as that sounds, is a more effective way to get them to do what you want them to do [laughs], as opposed to say, "Hey, stop doing the thing I don't want you to do," or attack their identity, or their job, or some other aspect of their life. Human behavior does not respond well to that generally, at least in my experience. Like, having your identity tied up in a tool or a platform is, unfortunately, pretty common in, like, a tech space. Like, oh, like, Ruby on Rails is the best piece of software or something like that. And it's like, well, you might like it, and that might be the best thing for you. And personally, I really like Ruby on Rails. I think it does a great job of what it does. But as an example, I would not use Ruby on Rails to maybe build an iOS app. I could; I think that's possible, but I don't think that's maybe the best tool for that job. And so, trying to, again, meet people where they are. STEPHANIE: I guess it kind of goes back to what you're saying. It's like, you want to help people do what they are trying to do. EDWARD: Yeah. Maybe there's a little paternalistic thinking, too, of, like, what's good for the industry, even if it feels bad for you right now. I don't love that sort of paternalistic thinking. But if it's a real risk, it seems worth at least addressing or pointing out and letting people make that decision for themselves. STEPHANIE: Yeah, absolutely. I am actually kind of curious about how do you, like, decide something for yourself? You know, like, how do you form your own opinion about technology? I think, yeah, like, a lot of people take GitHub for granted. They use it because that's just what's used, and that may or may not be a good reason for doing so. But that was a position I was in for a long time, right? You know, especially when you're newer to the industry, you're like, oh, well, this is what the company uses, or this is what, like, the industry uses. But, like, how do you start to figure out for yourself, like, do I actually like this? Does this help me meet my goals and needs? Is it doing what I want it to be doing? Do you have any thoughts about that? EDWARD: Yeah. I imagine most people listening to this…
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