Welcome to a New Gist(github.com)
github.com
Welcome to a New Gist
https://github.com/blog/1276-welcome-to-a-new-gist
93 comments
I like the update to gists.
--- Somewhat OT:
I find that github has always had poor to okay search capabilities.
For example, have you ever tried to search for a repo name, only to find 1000 forks? wat. Ever tried to search issues for a specific issue, only to find no results, removing a word or two to get a less accurate search.
Search for me is about discoverability. And github is for developers for the most part.
As a developer I want discoverability for code! I want regex features (like in google code search), better matches. Ways to compress my search results down. Search tags code:'if Awesome()'.
I just feel they could be doing so much better in this area.
--- Somewhat OT:
I find that github has always had poor to okay search capabilities.
For example, have you ever tried to search for a repo name, only to find 1000 forks? wat. Ever tried to search issues for a specific issue, only to find no results, removing a word or two to get a less accurate search.
Search for me is about discoverability. And github is for developers for the most part.
As a developer I want discoverability for code! I want regex features (like in google code search), better matches. Ways to compress my search results down. Search tags code:'if Awesome()'.
I just feel they could be doing so much better in this area.
The lack of search is the main reason I created http://gistedapp.herokuapp.com. Unfortunately I still find their search lacking in a few fundamental ways:
* it is (surprisingly?) case sensitive * it only searches titles, not file contents * the UI feels disconnected from the main gist area, making it unclear whether its a search of all Gists (like the previous version) or a personal search.
Fortunately, this update indicates they're paying attention to a much-used part of their product that was starting to feel neglected. At their pace of improvement I can't see these holes remaining for too long.
Now, hope they add back the ability to be notified when there's a comment on your gist (which Gisted supports)!
* it is (surprisingly?) case sensitive * it only searches titles, not file contents * the UI feels disconnected from the main gist area, making it unclear whether its a search of all Gists (like the previous version) or a personal search.
Fortunately, this update indicates they're paying attention to a much-used part of their product that was starting to feel neglected. At their pace of improvement I can't see these holes remaining for too long.
Now, hope they add back the ability to be notified when there's a comment on your gist (which Gisted supports)!
Happy to see, Gist has been lagging behind for a while now. And my Gist usage has exploded since installing this Vim plugin:
https://github.com/mattn/gist-vim
https://github.com/mattn/gist-vim
And in case you're an Emacs user, here's an equivalent: https://github.com/defunkt/gist.el :)
Available via marmalade as well.
I love you. You just made my day by posting this link!
Github is slowly turning into an IDE for the web.
In my opinion: In a couple of years we will not use Emacs or Visual Studio or anything like that: Most of programming will be done socially in Github via small changes directly from the website, from hundreds of people... it'd simplify the process of collaborative programming a lot.
In my opinion: In a couple of years we will not use Emacs or Visual Studio or anything like that: Most of programming will be done socially in Github via small changes directly from the website, from hundreds of people... it'd simplify the process of collaborative programming a lot.
As someone who's been on emacs the better part of a decade now, I find your opinion adorable and invite you to wrestle my editor/ide/im client/mail client/friend/lover from my cold, dead, RSI'd fingers.
As someone who's always worked alone, I also find your opinion adorable, and will code socially when someone manages to hack their way into my ultra secure coding vault. Which I admittedly let people into for pairing. Sometimes.
Collaborative doesn't necessarily mean synchronous. We learned this building the real time building system in second life. Sometimes you just want to sit in your corner and know no one else is gonna come in, and not having that ability cuts off a huge portion of people who just don't work well in that circumstance. It's awesome to work offline, alone.
As someone who's always worked alone, I also find your opinion adorable, and will code socially when someone manages to hack their way into my ultra secure coding vault. Which I admittedly let people into for pairing. Sometimes.
Collaborative doesn't necessarily mean synchronous. We learned this building the real time building system in second life. Sometimes you just want to sit in your corner and know no one else is gonna come in, and not having that ability cuts off a huge portion of people who just don't work well in that circumstance. It's awesome to work offline, alone.
> Most of programming will be done socially [...] via
> small changes [...] from hundreds of people
I'd think that the total SLOC in side/single-developer projects is miniscule compared to the total SLOC in social projects (e.g. Linux, GCC, Emacs, etc.), and even smaller compared to the SLOC in private/corporate code-bases.
I was specifically talking about opensource projects like Linux or Rails: Where most of commits nowadays are small bug fixes.
Of course, I'd never leave Emacs for Github when creating software from scratch or doing anything big.
Of course, I'd never leave Emacs for Github when creating software from scratch or doing anything big.
Most of programming will be done socially in Github via small changes directly from the website, from hundreds of people
What a nightmare.
I prefer very small teams whose members each have particular responsibilities so they're not stepping on each other, testing code before pushing out to the public.
What a nightmare.
I prefer very small teams whose members each have particular responsibilities so they're not stepping on each other, testing code before pushing out to the public.
Define "a couple of years."
A couple of decades, maybe.
Even then I disagree, but it's at least plausible.
Years though? I think you're over estimating how quickly this could possible happen.
A couple of decades, maybe.
Even then I disagree, but it's at least plausible.
Years though? I think you're over estimating how quickly this could possible happen.
That would violate Separation of Concerns :)
GitHub seems to be in the midst of a spree of new non-trivial features: in the past week or so, there have been 7 blog posts, every one introducing something new!
(Christmas spirit, maybe?)
(Christmas spirit, maybe?)
Shipping spirit :) It's definitely nothing planned on our part. We just happened to wrap up some stuff around the same time.
Tidings of serendipitous code, eh? Feliz Navidad!
I'm hoping (or at least correlating in my mind) that this has something to do with them stepping up their game in response to Bitbucket's overhaul.
This broke embedding single files from gists :( That's what I get for using Gist in blog posts and websites, I guess.
Sorry about that. We'll get a fix out there ASAP.
Oh shoot:
http://gist.io/3135754
http://bl.ocks.org/1353700
Two of my favorite gist frontends, broken :(
http://gist.io/3135754
http://bl.ocks.org/1353700
Two of my favorite gist frontends, broken :(
The API is currently down: https://status.github.com/
Fortunately, I implemented a cache layer on top of GitHub's API recently, so many examples are working on http://bl.ocks.org. But only those that are lucky enough not to get a connection timeout. Hopefully the API will be back up soon!
Fortunately, I implemented a cache layer on top of GitHub's API recently, so many examples are working on http://bl.ocks.org. But only those that are lucky enough not to get a connection timeout. Hopefully the API will be back up soon!
It seems like the Gist component of the API is either having a hard time or no longer works with JSONP.
I'm also having an issue with Plunker as legacy templates are pulled from Gist and are currently broken.
I'm also having an issue with Plunker as legacy templates are pulled from Gist and are currently broken.
Agreed- I've used gists heavily in my blog posts and they look pretty terrible right now. I sent feedback to Github via Twitter. Hopefully they'll fix it quickly.
I'm also a bit sad that they're still using document.write for the embeds. That breaks on any site that uses Ajax-like page loading and is bad practice in general.
Every comment here seems to be a gist love fest. I develop fulltime and use git and github, but have never understood why or how people use gist. Can someone explain how gist is valuable to them?
Clicking "discover" at gist.github.com is unenlightening.
Clicking "discover" at gist.github.com is unenlightening.
I use it for snippets of code that I want to save (and, maybe, make publicly available and link to) but aren’t serious enough for a repo. Here are some examples from [my gists](https://gist.github.com/Sidnicious):
- https://gist.github.com/1173880: A chunk of code to get information about running processes.
- https://gist.github.com/1082933: A little JavaScript function to decode quoted-printable encoding
- https://gist.github.com/842476: A chunk of code that blocks (I wrote it for a startup daemon) until the OS’s network stack is ready.
- https://gist.github.com/c980470f5ef244c4b4d3: My and a friend’s solution to the last level of Stripe’s CTF (may not be the final version)
- https://gist.github.com/2586751: A patch against a JSON library that to make it handle escapes in a spec-compliant way.
…Some of them are useful as-is, others are useful as reminders of how I dealt with a particular problem in case I run into it again.
- https://gist.github.com/1173880: A chunk of code to get information about running processes.
- https://gist.github.com/1082933: A little JavaScript function to decode quoted-printable encoding
- https://gist.github.com/842476: A chunk of code that blocks (I wrote it for a startup daemon) until the OS’s network stack is ready.
- https://gist.github.com/c980470f5ef244c4b4d3: My and a friend’s solution to the last level of Stripe’s CTF (may not be the final version)
- https://gist.github.com/2586751: A patch against a JSON library that to make it handle escapes in a spec-compliant way.
…Some of them are useful as-is, others are useful as reminders of how I dealt with a particular problem in case I run into it again.
Most users (myself included) seem to use it primarily as a better pastebin than most of the pastebins on the Web. It's tied to your account (so you can manage previously posted Gists easily), it's versioned and available over git as an ad hoc repository, and the highlighting is pretty good.
What I find puzzling is seeing what appear to be blog posts published as gists.
What's the reasoning for this? I imagine if you don't have a blog of any kind it fills in, but it seems a odd place to publish lengthy essays.
What's the reasoning for this? I imagine if you don't have a blog of any kind it fills in, but it seems a odd place to publish lengthy essays.
I think there's a couple of sites that take markdown in a Gist and put them up as formatted posts.
Add Disqus and you've got a neat little product.
Add Disqus and you've got a neat little product.
Looking through both my secret and public gists, I've used it for
- lecture notes
- collection of resources
- snippets of code (for myself or remote teammates)
- todo lists
- tutoring
- and more...
- lecture notes
- collection of resources
- snippets of code (for myself or remote teammates)
- todo lists
- tutoring
- and more...
its a slightly better looking http://pastie.org/. sharing snippets of code is quite useful, especially if the team is a remote team.
I love "Secret Gist" vs. "Public Gist"
gist.github was way behind the rest of Github for a long time. It's good to see they've finally released this because they've no doubt been working on it for a while.
gist.github was way behind the rest of Github for a long time. It's good to see they've finally released this because they've no doubt been working on it for a while.
I think "Secret Gist" is just a renaming of "Private Gist" which has existed for a while: only people with the url will see it. It's a better and more accurate name, for sure.
I do wish there was a true "private" gist, though, for easily preventing people I don't specify from seeing it. I'd love to be able to use it to trade code examples for work, but there's nothing to prevent someone from accidentally pasting the url into the wrong irc window and showing the world our internals.
I do wish there was a true "private" gist, though, for easily preventing people I don't specify from seeing it. I'd love to be able to use it to trade code examples for work, but there's nothing to prevent someone from accidentally pasting the url into the wrong irc window and showing the world our internals.
I know it's a rename. That's a cool idea. Sort of the way Google Docs handles it by letting you specify emails that can view your document.
I'm getting "OAuth Failure" trying to sign-in [1]
[1] https://gist.github.com/auth/failure?message=timeout&ori...
[1] https://gist.github.com/auth/failure?message=timeout&ori...
Gists are now wrongly named. For instance: https://gist.github.com/4260740 this sounds a bit weird that this gist is named "readme.md"
I'd love to see the ability to print (with the wonderful formating in-tact, and none of the interface) directly from my Gists. There are various bookmarklets out in the wild that attempt to do this, all of which are of course broken after this update.
I just had a need to do this with a bit of documentation I was writing. Ended up modifying the DOM to show/hide what I wanted and allow the screen stylesheet to be used in printing (to PDF).
I just had a need to do this with a bit of documentation I was writing. Ended up modifying the DOM to show/hide what I wanted and allow the screen stylesheet to be used in printing (to PDF).
Gists does ship with a print stylesheet which strips most of the interface.
I love it -- I've been looking for a place to put trivial programs that is lighter-weight than creating your own repository.
I just wish that the advertising when you embed into another website was a bit more subtle. Right now it's a full line of text "This Gist brought to you by GitHub" that is tagged onto the bottom of every embed. If your blog post has a lot of these, especially short ones, it can quickly become intrusive.
I just wish that the advertising when you embed into another website was a bit more subtle. Right now it's a full line of text "This Gist brought to you by GitHub" that is tagged onto the bottom of every embed. If your blog post has a lot of these, especially short ones, it can quickly become intrusive.
Can't upvote this enough, It reminds me of the days when you had to have a banner at the bottom advertising the free site builder you were using. Not cool.
Great improvements, love the search.
Still wishing I could get Gist pull requests or merge forks of my Gist from the UI.
Still wishing I could get Gist pull requests or merge forks of my Gist from the UI.
As many have already said, Github just keeps delivering quality, well-conceived and well-integrated updates. I hope they keep coming.
Now for my shameless plug:
If you use Gist as a means to share web-related snippets, you might be amazed by the Plunker editor (http://plnkr.co/edit/). It was inspired by Gist, but will let you actually 'run' your code (and will do some other cool stuff like real-time collaboration, previewing and linting). This tool has become quite popular in the AngularJS community and I hope to see more groups get on board in the future!
Now for my shameless plug:
If you use Gist as a means to share web-related snippets, you might be amazed by the Plunker editor (http://plnkr.co/edit/). It was inspired by Gist, but will let you actually 'run' your code (and will do some other cool stuff like real-time collaboration, previewing and linting). This tool has become quite popular in the AngularJS community and I hope to see more groups get on board in the future!
Also, since we're talking about Gist, you can get your gists into Plunker very easily:
http://plnkr.co/edit/gist:1136236?p=preview is a snippet by the unbelievable Mike Bostock pulled directly from Gist.
http://plnkr.co/edit/gist:1136236?p=preview is a snippet by the unbelievable Mike Bostock pulled directly from Gist.
I looked at Plunker, and then I got sperm on my screen.
It's great but I wish they added the ability to comment on a line.
Here's the blog post about the redesign: https://github.com/blog/1276-welcome-to-a-new-gist
Isn't that what this post is linked to?
Maybe somebody changed the link?
They did; it was originally just a link to a random Gist to show the new design.
GitHub sees the value in the snippet concept behind Gist and has been giving it serious limelight lately.
I want to see Gist evolve into a Dribbble/Behance gallery but for showing off code snippets of value instead of images. We can already convey advanced ideas simply in few lines. To provide a little more story behind our contribution and share it in a small network could really build a nice broad community whose infrastructure has been laid already.
I want to see Gist evolve into a Dribbble/Behance gallery but for showing off code snippets of value instead of images. We can already convey advanced ideas simply in few lines. To provide a little more story behind our contribution and share it in a small network could really build a nice broad community whose infrastructure has been laid already.
It's about time. I've been waiting for Github to overhaul the Gists functionality, I've been ever-increasingly relying on it to store my snippets as well as posting code in blog posts, and being able to search through your own Gists is a MASSIVE addition.
I've really been loving all of these Github updates the past year, they've been killing it and it's good to see they've finally given Gist some love.
I've really been loving all of these Github updates the past year, they've been killing it and it's good to see they've finally given Gist some love.
[deleted]
Much needed update and Looking Good but one thing, why is the 'Delete Gist' on the Edit Gist Pages rather than the Main Page?
Doh! I just bought Evercode!
I don't see a way to post gists directly from an editor like Sublime, but I'll be all over that when I find it.
I don't see a way to post gists directly from an editor like Sublime, but I'll be all over that when I find it.
The Sublime GitHub plugin for Sublime handles this nicely:
https://github.com/bgreenlee/sublime-github
https://github.com/bgreenlee/sublime-github
Awesome, thanks
I love these guys! Yesterday I came across an annoying bug related to embedded gists and markdown files, and this fixes it.
Related discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11456558/markdown-not-ren...
Related discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11456558/markdown-not-ren...
Github has been on fire for one week.
I just wish a way to label or organize my gists. I have dozens of them. That would be great!
I don't understand the benefit of gists. If they're full git repos, why not just use a normal github project?
Having a pasteboard type gist makes me wonder things like,
- Can a gist have multiple files in it?
- What is a file inside a gist named?
- Can I convert a gist to a normal project?
- Can I convert a normal project to a gist?
Having a pasteboard type gist makes me wonder things like,
- Can a gist have multiple files in it?
- What is a file inside a gist named?
- Can I convert a gist to a normal project?
- Can I convert a normal project to a gist?
Thanks github team!!
When I'm learning a new framework / lib / language I love to look at other people's gists for good (and bad!) working examples. That said, I would LOVE the ability to sort search results by date / number of comments / forks etc.
When I'm learning a new framework / lib / language I love to look at other people's gists for good (and bad!) working examples. That said, I would LOVE the ability to sort search results by date / number of comments / forks etc.
I like the changes, except that it broke syntax highlighting for php gists without open and close tags. For example: https://gist.github.com/3837352
Heads up, opening a Gist to edit/view from my list in a new tab (CTRL + clicking) doesn't work in Chrome 21.0.1180.75. The Stylesheet doesn't seem to load, not sure if this is an individual issue on my system.
I hope we get to see Collections for gists, because I am finding them really unmanageable otherwise, and there is little incentive for people to browse through them otherwise.
Same here. I have lots of snippets (in JS, Python, Go,etc..). Managing them is a pain. Also I have some that I use for my blog examples however executing them alone doesnt do anything. It would be great if I could organize them.
Oh yeah, right. I forget the concept of using gists in blog posts, but I guess it's because I quit that thought because of how much of a mess it leaves behind in your gist list.
Wouldn't that be a GitHub repository?
No. Repo lists are cluttered enough as it is. :)
A collection would just be a category of gists in a category like "Idiomatic Python examples", "Django snippets", and so on.
I think people use gists in a fundamentally different way (I do), and I guess you could argue that gists are mainly for viewing and sharing whereas repos are for cloning/downloads.
Think Collections as Pinterest boards for code, perhaps. :)
Gists could be social, whereas repos are more self-serving and utilitarian in the sense of scratching an itch. Or at least they could be.
A collection would just be a category of gists in a category like "Idiomatic Python examples", "Django snippets", and so on.
I think people use gists in a fundamentally different way (I do), and I guess you could argue that gists are mainly for viewing and sharing whereas repos are for cloning/downloads.
Think Collections as Pinterest boards for code, perhaps. :)
Gists could be social, whereas repos are more self-serving and utilitarian in the sense of scratching an itch. Or at least they could be.
Does any one have problems to create or modify a gist?
I am having the problem since this new face of gist.
Now it's still not fixed in my case. What happened to github?
Now it's still not fixed in my case. What happened to github?
[deleted]
I'm currently getting HTTP 500 errors when I try to load https://gist.github.com/
Am I missing it, or can anonymous gists no longer be claimed and deleted by the person that created them while still in the session?
Whoops, horizontal scrollbar on 1024*768.
Tried it out. It's bloody fantastic.
As long as whatever you're editing is supported by the editor, that leaves little to be desired.
Nice work.
As long as whatever you're editing is supported by the editor, that leaves little to be desired.
Nice work.
I was hoping that they would finally add the ability to put a gist in a folder or tag one :(
automatic language detection would be great
this is good ... but, frankly, i was hoping for the ability to tag gists + ability to get a feed from a tag
is there any way to collaborate on gists?
I use gists all day every day: it's where I dump and share pieces of reusable code. It's always been a huge pain to search for something you know you gisted, but can no longer find without browsing through 20 pages of 3-line excerpts. Search makes this a million times better.
The new code editor is also pretty sweet!