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Ben Halpern for The DEV Team

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People rarely use complicated git commands on the weekend, and I have the data to prove it.

Preamble: We've been running an experimental project to catalog good evergreen guides on DEV. Some initial work is available here if you're curious. It's a low-key experiment so don't read too much into what's currently there. But that's an aside to the topic of this post.

In tracking the project, I've been keeping an eye on traffic coming to these guides based on how we organize things — and by starting with CSS and Git topics, I noticed something pretty stark: Weekend git traffic falls off wayyyyy more than CSS.

CSS traffic falls by about 40-50% on weekends. Git search traffic falls by about 80%. 🤯

This isn't exactly surprising — it's just interesting to see. On the weekend, work is most likely to be solo — and use of git, if at all, is most likely in a pretty straightforward way with minimal branching.

Remember, this is not overall development, it is git relative to another pretty ubiquitous tool. I think it's unlikely people who have git as part of their flow at all don't use it on their weekend projects — but I expect that they are way more likely to stay within their comfort zone and routine, and do not have to look up git commands nearly as often as in a collaborative work environment.

Happy branching ❤️

Top comments (11)

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raddevus profile image
raddevus

I think Twitter graph would look similar, except the dip would be even more drastic on the weekends.

The reason that is interesting is because :

My Theory

If people aren't at work they don't waste time on Twitter.

Main Point

Twitter is really just people wasting time -- but they aren't wasting valuable time, instead they are just wasting work time.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

A lot of platforms will have a dip on weekends (or a rise on weekends, depending on the nature of the space), but here we have a very specific topical dip.

People still do a fair bit of Googling for CSS answers, but barely seek out any git answers. It's not just the absolute dip, but the relative one.

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manuartero profile image
Manuel Artero Anguita 🟨 • Edited

Maybe we can try a different reading?

Maybe the "standard" fall for any technology approach git numbers (80-90%) ... while CSS is the one that highlights (falling just 40-50%)? maybe because side-projects trend to need cool shadow-boxes ?

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aaronsmulktis profile image
Smokey • Edited

Lets turn this thread into a sharing shower and swap git commands:

Here's my favorite by far:

git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
"git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch .idea" \
--prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

So in many cases, you accidentally committed your secrets or personal config into the app way too early on. Here's what that command does to help:

  • searches every branch & commit for the .idea file
  • deletes any trace of that file from every branch & commit
  • then just git push origin --all --force to overwrite your remote history
  • tell your mates to git fetch origin
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drsensor profile image
૮༼⚆︿⚆༽つ

I think they delegate their git problems and workflow to vscode (with or without extension). Think like solving merge conflict and staging hunk of code can be figure out by just right clicking. It even has notification when something goes wrong. The only thing that essential but can't be grasped by exploring the UI alone is how to gpg sign the commit.

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abhinav1217 profile image
Abhinav Kulshreshtha

All I use in git pull and branch, except for the standard add, commit, status.

Many years ago, I did use cherrypicking, but most projects I contribute to these days have a simpler workflow, even in company, the project management is refined enough that need for cherrypicking, usually means project manager screwed up when distributing tasks.

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ozkanpakdil profile image
özkan pakdil

can we see any proof of data ? for "CSS traffic falls by about 40-50% on weekends. Git search traffic falls by about 80%" in the article ?

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Ha, love this tidbit.

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tbroyer profile image
Thomas Broyer

What do you mean by "complicated commands"?

Could it possibly mean that people care less about their commit history in personal projects than at work?

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devinrhode2 profile image
Devin Rhode

Git is a way to collaborate on code

Weekends have less collaboration

Anything tricky with git is probably going to have some collaborative backdrop

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christiankozalla profile image
Christian Kozalla

Sending a unicorn just for your post's title🦄