[HN Gopher] Show HN: Simple way to access various statistics in ...
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Show HN: Simple way to access various statistics in Git repository
Author : arzzen
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-04-29 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| I didn't see code velocity, which is a good stat to use for
| teams. I haven't tried it but this repo seems interesting on a
| similar note:
|
| https://github.com/jph98/github-pr-stats
| arunc wrote:
| Collecting git statistics is fun and not easy. I miss the
| equivalent of `hg chrun`.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Obligatory post for every thread about code metrics:
| https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...
| tazeg95 wrote:
| Try also "gource" in cli for a great live video :
| https://gource.io/
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| Nice!
|
| Would be cool to have also a multi-repository way so that you can
| have aggregated stats for multiple repos
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| eeeeewwwww no no no no no. lines of code/number of commits/number
| of changelog items != productivity. If you are a lead or a
| manager, read this message.
|
| Software development progress is anything but linear and any
| attempts to make a metric that does not reflect actual results
| will result in nothing but succeeding in that pointless metric.
| sdesol wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm the founder of GitSense which is working to
| make software metrics a good thing for both leaders and
| developers, so assume I have a bias.
|
| > lines of code/number of commits/number of changelog items !=
| productivity
|
| This is the biggest challenge that I'm currently faced with
| right now, as GitPrime (now Pluralsight Flow), GitHub Insights
| (formerly Gitalytics), Waydev and others have been very
| effective at giving the impression that you can easily roll-up
| metrics to quantify developer productivity. You will be
| surprised by how many times people want a simple score or a
| simple graph to summarize how productive a developer is.
|
| What really bugs me about lines of code/number of commits/etc.
| metrics is they are actually really useful for developers, but
| because they are used incorrectly, it takes a lot of effort to
| explain to people that context matters. For example, if I want
| to know what developers contributed to the src/vs/base
| directory in the vscode project in the last 30 days, lines of
| code/number of commits/etc. is quite useful. See the following
| for an example of what I mean:
|
| https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=path...
|
| If you switch to the impact view, you can quickly tell based on
| code churn, commits and other metrics who had the greatest
| impact. I talk a bit more about impact in the following post,
| so I won't repeat things here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26457072
|
| Right now what I'm working on is making a connected efforts
| graph that should help management better understand how much
| effort it takes to develop code, which I'm hoping will displace
| the notion that you can quantify productivity with low hanging
| code metrics. For example, when you look at a code change, you
| should be able to see that it is connected to x number of
| meetings, x number of emails, x number of code review comments,
| and so forth.
|
| When it is all over, tracking every line change is a good thing
| as it benefits everybody, but how it is used today out of
| convenience is certainly presenting challenges for what I'm
| working on.
|
| Edit: Do not install my tool as the docker image has an out of
| date license that I need to update.
| hu3 wrote:
| It's funny because this week I'm at -2000 lines of code after
| refactoring, removing redundant slow tests code and
| implementing some small new features. Guess I'm fired.
| sdesol wrote:
| Not if the metrics is done right! Code churn is always
| positive since it's "lines added + changed + deleted"
| Honestly your example is exactly why software metrics is a
| good thing for developers.
|
| If you run blame across the file, it won't be obvious that
| you deleted a bunch of code, but code churn history will.
| tuckerpo wrote:
| Eh, there's a point where commits _could_ be used for metrics,
| assuming those being monitored are unaware. I dislike the LARP
| of "oh yeah, it takes me 7 hours to think deeply about the
| problem of changing this SQL statement, and then one hour and
| one commit to implement it."
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| if you are writing a SQL statement that has high impact on
| the business, take 7 hours to think about it if you need.
|
| If you are suggesting tooling around for 7 hours and then
| working for 1... sure, if it is a pattern in the persons
| behavior but dont use time to commit time as the measurement.
| The issue is not time to complete. the issue is a lack of
| engagement and that data can be gathered in less harmful
| ways.
|
| Additionally, I would refrain from getting so granular into
| how much someone spends each our of every day. that trope is
| sure to detract talented people.
| der_ketzer wrote:
| eeeeewwwww no no no no no. Why every cute stat needs to be
| converted into a metric ot enslave people. Yes, I know,
| "because that's what managers do". But then I would argue it's
| in "us" (the programmers) to not let it happen. Yes, I know,
| "you cannot do that in big corp". Well then, there's no point
| in complaining either about anything, since we already assume
| that its a defacto situation, take it for granted and nobody
| can do anything about that.
|
| Still, as a counterpoint of how this can be fun: When a fellow
| programmer left the company where I work, the CTO created a
| small video of the evolution of the services/code based on his
| commits during time. You could see the different repos popping
| up and showing his contributions to each during time and
| growth. Also, since he is (or was) a smoker, he got a zippo
| engraved with the number of commits and lines of code
| contributed. Does it mean he was good? He was bad? He did a
| lot? He did nothing? Noup. Of course, he worked for 5 years in
| the company, so it was a way to show to him that he contributed
| a lot and was part of the growth/existence of it, not if he was
| the most valuable programmer in the team. If you ask me, maybe
| many of the lines he commited doesn't exist anymore in the
| current code, still it was a snapshot of what he was for the
| team and company at that point. And the value was not on the
| code, but on being part of the team and the process of a
| company growing.
|
| You can do whatever you want with stats, it's in you if its for
| good or not.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| It dumps branch info too.
|
| Also a good example of how to write a large-ish shell script
| with a simple user interface. I may use this to combine some
| smaller related scripts that our team uses.
| nightski wrote:
| You don't have to use it as a measure of productivity. I find
| running these kinds of stats on my code bases fascinating. This
| tool looks really neat imho, great work OP.
| sdesol wrote:
| > You don't have to use it as a measure of productivity
|
| What I've found is this is well understood by technical
| people, but not so much by non-technical people.
|
| I won't go into too much detail, but to make the long story
| short, Amazon, Google, Apple, and other tech giants are
| scaring the shit out of non-traditional tech companies in the
| financial industry, health care, etc. And the reason for that
| is, they (tech giants) are going into different verticals and
| they (non tech companies) realize they need to develop
| software faster and they are desperately looking for ways to
| help them overcome their ability to manage and attract tech
| talent.
|
| So for them, when they see GitPrime, GitHub Insights and
| other similar solutions, they get very excited as they
| believe they found that magical translator that can help them
| better manage developers. This is why software metrics is
| rarely adopted by tech companies but is in high demand by non
| tech companies, which there are MANY. For example, I was
| talking to a developer in a food storage company that
| develops in-house software to manage their automation
| systems. It is these non-traditional tech companies that
| really want to be able quantify developer productivity and
| why lines of code, commits, can be so dangerous.
| webo wrote:
| You're making very wild and invalid projections here.
| sdesol wrote:
| How so?
|
| When I took time off from my first startup (which is the
| foundation for my current startup), I ended up working
| for a fintech with close to 1 trillion dollars in assets
| and my job was to help them transform into a technology
| company. And they were literally rewarding people (gave
| them gift certificates) for having the most commits,
| without even asking what the commits were for. Note, the
| company that I was working for wasn't the only large
| institution that is afraid of tech giants like Amazon and
| others.
|
| Also Pluralsight paying 180M for GitPrime and GitHub
| paying a decent amount for Gitalytics signals that there
| is demand for software metrics.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Good software isn't built this way though so it won't
| stick around. Analytics like these can be really useful
| but the companies with the best developers won't get away
| with abusing them
| sdesol wrote:
| This is typically the pattern. To quote a tech manager "I
| like software metrics but if I implement it, my engineers
| will revolt" when talking about one of the most popular
| software metrics solutions today.
|
| GitHub Insights has turned into a hot topic for GitHub
| internally and if you use wayback to look at GitHub's
| enterprise sales page from a year and a half ago when
| they acquired Gitalytics to today, you will find they are
| pretty much sweeping GitHub Insights under the rug
| because they know how developers feel about software
| metrics.
|
| Software metrics can (which is what I am working on) be
| useful for everybody, but right now, too many non-
| technical managers just want to "tell if an employee is
| dicking around or not". Until these non traditional tech
| companies lose talent, they will assume everything is
| okay. And based on what I've seen with the fintech that I
| worked for, many employees will just accept things, since
| it's not like Apple, Google, Facebook and others will
| fight for them.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > help them better manage developers.
|
| The only way to better manage developers is to have a
| manager that used to be developer.
|
| If that's impossible, the best option left would be to just
| trust the developers on their reports.
|
| All of the other options that are taken (which I would say,
| for these traditional companies, 99% of the time)
| inevitably result in a mess.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| They do realize it's exactly the type of behaviors that is
| going to push overperforming developers (10x) to switch to
| real tech companies right?
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| you should not use it as a measure of productivity. I wrote
| my message to warn people who might get that idea.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is good information. I will add it to my favorites.
|
| _(Only a few older nerds will get that)_
|
| It is nice. I think it will be useful. Thanks!
| grakic wrote:
| I do like burndown chart showing code as layers over time
| https://github.com/src-d/hercules#project-burndown
|
| Like other stats, it is not to be taken too seriously on early
| projects where re-linting or moving lines around may show as
| dropping all old code...
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(page generated 2021-04-29 23:02 UTC)