https://youtu.be/cdcjw5etCnw?si=MQWGQE_MLIbDaUun GitHub launched in 2009, and almost immediately became the primary code version control tool of new technology startups. From there, it's growth was meteoric and exponential. ^[1] !Pasted image 20250216184410_GitHub_Chart Repository Growth.png ^[2]

"GitHub is like the air we breathe. It’s such a natural part of the way we work that sometimes we don’t even notice it. We cannot imagine living without GitHub.” Ryuzo Yamamoto // Software Engineer, Souzoh ^[3]

Slowly but surely, GitHub has become and will continue to get better at being the "everything" tool for collaborative software development. Smaller development teams already find no reason to adopt Workflow Management tools like Linear. GitHub sports "just-good-enough" Task Management, written about on their Docs here. They use Markdown inspired writing functionality, which extends basic text in many versatile ways. ^[1]

You can find little libraries that can speed you up considerably, such as Swapy Major collaborations on web security are now performed over GitHub, including Portable Open SSH GitHub has also become a public repository for computational work in science, with similar functionality as peer review.

The social network and community features of GitHub enable new Decision Heuristics in evaluating potential software solutions in the adoption process. ^[4]

GitHub has become the mainstay in the development and adoption of Open Source software. Every year, they publish the premier industry report, the Octoverse, which uses data on the GitHub platform.

Source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4515335-gitlab-too-much-competition-little-differentiation-elevated-valuation-sell-for-better-entry-point

Taking a step back, the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution developed a complex, emergent system of codifying and sharing knowledge: the endgame of academic work became the publication of an article to a peer reviewed journal. For those now doing their work by using programming languages to do computational work, they actually just use GitHub (which probably doesn't affect hiring and tenure at academic institutions yet, but...). Take for example this code base for analyzing DNA -- Dart-Eval: A Comprehensive DNA Language Model Evaluation Benchmark on Regulatory DNA. !Screenshot 2025 02 02 at 12.49.07 PM_Dart Eval GitHub.png GitHub is now serving the same function as staying up-to-speed with evolving knowledge as going to a University library and pouring over recent journal publications. Therefore, watching trending code bases on GitHub now has dramatic effects on knowledge dissemination.

AI Explains GitHub

Footnotes