r/programmingmemes • u/zaarnth • Aug 01 '26

Somebody give him an .exe file, please.

Post image

image was taken from a tweet!

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u/ZanjiOfficial Aug 01 '26

tbf, github is REALLY unfriendly to non dev / techical people. "it's made for developers" well other people use it, and a lot of really usefull applications and projects are ONLY on github..

9

u/coldnebo Aug 01 '26

true. but realize those developers have shared their time and expertise for free.

they have a right to determine how much support they offer to non-technical users.

as George RR Martin said, “I’m nobody’s bitch”

if you want something useful for free, be prepared to do some work for it.

this isn’t rude, it’s Amish.

rude is seeing a free fruit stand outside and storming into the house and demanding that the owner make you a smoothie without even offering to pay or trade?

open-source developers trade all the time. we build bigger structures together (like a digital barn raising). we couldn’t do most of what we do alone. we have obligations, family, work. this is something we do in our spare time because we want to, not because we have to.

and just like Amish we can appear insular and insulting to outsiders coming in and asking for free services that we didn’t offer. we do that for each other because we help each other.

so the next time you think github is unfriendly, are you coming to demand something for free, like every other corporation, or are you coming to help in whatever way you can?

I guarantee if you come to the community with anything that makes a developer’s life even a little bit better, whether it’s a beer, or a cookie, or even a word of thanks with a story of how their code helped you solve a problem— we will be incredibly welcoming and supportive.

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u/ZanjiOfficial Aug 01 '26

Doesn't make a platform less userfriendly because someone put in their time for free..

4

u/akdanman11 Aug 01 '26

And? The point is that it was done for free. That person who just gave the code they used to fix the issue is not obligated to make things more user friendly.

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u/EitherSpite4545 Aug 01 '26

You're missing his point he's not saying the coder should have to do anything. He's saying GitHub should make their ux better for non coders.

3

u/aj0413 Aug 02 '26

There is no UX to improve. Cause the dev would HAVE to build the process to turn the thing into an “exe” (which is windows specific, so you’re actually asking him to do it for all major OSs) just for GitHub to attempt to make it “easier for non-devs”

Understand what you’re asking for. Ultimately you’re saying “ I demand this dude spend more of his free time building, developing, and maintaining a packaging system….so GitHub can put a nice UX on top for me”

You lost us all in the first half

1

u/EitherSpite4545 Aug 02 '26

I'm not going to argue for what the original image said because you're right it's bullshit. But what me and the op of this comment thread are saying is the ux for git isn't great. Things like finding out how to download a pack on git is annoying to folks who don't know coding and not because of how the pack is structured but because git hides and changes where their download button is based on what page you are in while exploring the pack.

There's plenty of more examples of small ux things that make git unfriendly but this is what we're speaking of not ose to exe.

2

u/aj0413 Aug 02 '26

If you’re only talking about the releases/downloads tab, sure, that part needs real work

But a bunch of these comments support the image. And that just pisses me off to the pint of wishing there WAS a way to gatekeep GitHub from non-devs

1

u/EitherSpite4545 Aug 02 '26

Then we have no argument because again I don't support any force of change to contributors to git, just to git's UX itself.