If I Could Make My Own GitHub
SMRTR summary
Every software developer knows the feeling: it's nearly midnight, you're pushing a commit titled "asdfasdf," and somewhere, a senior engineer is staring blankly at a four-line pull request, waiting for someone to type "LGTM."
One developer has had enough. In a sharp, funny critique of modern code-hosting platforms like GitHub and GitLab, they argue that today's forges, the tools where most software gets built and reviewed, are clunky, bloated, and fundamentally misaligned with how people actually work.
The problems are real: approval processes that are too rigid, repositories that download far more history than anyone needs, and feature bloat that turns useful tools into slow, sprawling messes.
The dream? A lightweight, flexible forge built around modern ideas like shallow clones, offline-friendly actions, and smarter, more nuanced code review.
As the developer puts it, "the monolithic forge is breaking down and nobody has built the replacement. The people with the money are busy with the rockets."
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to lobste.rs.
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