SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Cloud9/Ace/SkyWriter/Whatever-it's-called-today seems like a much better implementation of this.

15 lat temudiscuss

Just an update: GitMac is now out of beta and called Sprout on the Mac App Store http://gitmacapp.com/sprout

15 lat temudiscuss

Saw Avdi do this talk at Magic Ruby. It was really nice, and in depth, and answered quite a few questions. I bet the book is well worth the money.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Same here.

     var _this = this;    //vanilla
     var $this = $(this); //jQuery

Though, I have encountered people who are really against the $var for stylistic reasons - so ymmv.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Agreed! (IMO the ML backlash is more of a XML backlash that carried over to other MLs).

Regardless - A designer that can design for any* framework with standard CSS/HTML is more flexible than a designer that knows HAML, but could't write vanilla markup.

That why I was surprised about the Coffeescript (preferring HAML is a popular opinion, as-is Rspec: yet Erb and Test::Unit are still the defaults).

Edit: I agree that alt. languages/syntaxes in frameworks are nice. Forcing them on people is not nice.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Agreed about SASS (prefer LESS, but still applies), and somewhat with CoffeeScript (I'm in the "make-it-optional-not-default-but-i-heart-CS" camp)...but 100% about HAML. It just always strikes me as backlash against HTML rather than an actual improvement.

What happens when you give HAML to a non-Rails designer? Maybe it's just taste, but I feel that true markup with template tags for data (erb) is much better than a whole new markup language for designers to learn. YMMV.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Agreed. The "Minefield" (besides being a terrible alpha/pre-release codename) icon left a lot to be desired.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Ah, that makes sense! Sorry.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

So it's still easier for people to find and buy your app than it was before the App Store - and you still have to do the same marketing that you would have without the App Store.

What's the problem?

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Take this advice! The people that are actually suffering from the problems your business solves are (usually) not managers, CEO, or anyone at the top. It is the people in the middle or bottom. They are usually also so happy to have something that solves their problems, that they will act as an internal champion for you during the sales process.

It's cliche, but Art of the Start http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-start/ explains this tactic very well.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Agreed. Build for the problems you face now - not the problems you may theoretically have in the future.

If a business grows that rapidly - it is most likely that the original systems will have evolved dramatically from day one anyway - in ways you wouldn't have imagined.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

I don't care as much as other people that Facebook === blue.

But, IMO it needs a bit more polish. To a designer's eye, this immediately screams "programmer-designed". You may want to hire a designer - hand them these mockups - and let them add a "designers' touch" [more padding, better typographic alignment, softer contrasts, etc].

That said - this is a big improvement over the previous design. Also, please don't feel like I am ragging on your work, just a bit of constructive criticism.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

We shared this with HN when we were first starting out[1] (in pre-beta stage) and we just wanted to share the progress we have made and say "thanks" - as our awesome beta tester userbase was mostly HN readers.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660200

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

You probably aren't our target market (people new to Git) - but we are working on Git UI for OSX aimed at making the most common commands easy to perform. http://gitmacapp.com/download

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Firebug. The Webkit inspector is catching up nicely, but for now Firebug is Firefox's 'killer feature' (at least for web devs).

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

This is a straw man argument. The question isn't whether Git could be more intuitive/user-friendly (Hint: It should be, in fact I bet my company on it [see my profile]), or whether it is more secure/cheap to host your own repo.

If you have a million people `pull`ing from your repo, of course you should have be hosting your own public access point. But, in 80% of cases, people can't be bothered to figure out how to set up Gitosis, pay for slices, mess with DNS, etc. just to host a repo.

To put it another way, see: Heroku vs. EC2

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

Either it's: intentional, or they just don't give a damn.

Considering the sources of most of their revenues, I'd say #2 is most likely. Companies that have been in Enterprise that long, making hand-over-fist money from mediocre products, acquired IP, and vendor lock-in often have a "quaint rag-tag" view of the FOSS development community.

I tend to think it's a myopic viewpoint, but then again we are a tiny indie shop, and they are multi-billion dollar company.

SpiralLab

15 lat temudiscuss

A major selling point of Git is the distributed part. You are allowed (even encouraged) to have more than one "source of truth". For ~7$/mo (including admin. and cheaper than Linode), GitHub is just another place to have a hosted version of your repo, with a nice UI and social features.

Shit happens, servers go down, that's why you also have a remote repo hosted on Linode, and X, and Y too.

SpiralLab

16 lat temudiscuss

Nice! Thanks for the info.

SpiralLab

16 lat temudiscuss

...it's not just the experience it's everything: the hardware, software, UI, materials, industrial design, aesthetics...

This. Try and think of one other computer company that has/takes/enforces that much control on every aspect of their product. Sure, some companies make decent high-quality hardware, and some companies make okay software. But what sets Apple apart is the quality/attention to detail that goes into every aspect of the product.

Each product is designed as an cohesive package, that "just works" out of the box. If you want to hack that product, it's your prerogative, but don't complain that it's not as easy to accomplish.

Disclaimer: We are a Mac software company. We consider hack-ability important, it's just not what Apple is selling.

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Show HN: Sprout (formerly GitMac) the Fast Simple Git Mac App

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