11
eo2875
3y

I just learned today that GitHub is used for stuff other than programming

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  • 4
    I know that some people use it as file storage ( hence why there are file & repo size limits), but what else?
  • 8
    It's a great collaboration tool for documentation. Github pages
  • 1
    Yeah my partner is using it for a research project as a collaborative file storage. They seem to use a bit of branches here and there
  • 1
    Today I got a PDF copy of the D&D fifth edition Monster Manual from github.
  • 8
    You can apply version control to pretty much anything though, it's great seeing designers use GitHub instead of having:

    this.psd
    This1.psd
    NoThis1.psd
    NoThis1-2.psd
    Final.psd
    Final2.psd
    Final-3.psd
  • 3
    Git is great at managing anything that is saved as text files
    I wrote my thesis in LaTeX and had all the files in a repo
  • 3
    LAW! It should be used for legislation, writing bills etc
  • 5
    @87percentrum actually, I've been thinking about a law programming language to avoid all of the ambiguities of laws, and make explicit the ones that are intentionally ambiguous. Ideally, you'd input some parameters for your case and the program would tell you "you have to prove that you did not appear to be a threat, so the cops shot you without provocation and it's their fault".

    Then I think about how this would shift the balance of power too much since it'd be harder for politicians to twist meanings, so they'd never approve its use 😝
  • 2
    @eo2875 do it in prolog
  • 1
    Documentation and papers are my two non-programming use cases. That's the main reason I use Latex - it's a non binary format that actually looks decent.
  • 1
    @eo2875 it's really really difficult to capture all relevant information in a formal system because there's a degree of abstraction involved, even if you're using a really advanced system like Twelf or Coq which implement pretty powerful dependent types. If it was possible to do quite that easily it would've been done already. The real world is (almost necessarily) messy. There's research into this though, and for subsets it's definitely possible to do.

    It'd also require rewriting the law, which is a difficult exercise even if everyone was willing.

    I'd say these are bigger barriers than lawyers and politicians not wanting to change the status quo.
  • 2
    I'm a tech book writer and editor. All my books (and my authors' books) are on GitHub, written in MD, in various stages of editing.
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