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GitHub vs Stack Overflow: What are the differences?
Key Differences between GitHub and Stack Overflow
GitHub and Stack Overflow are both popular platforms in the field of software development and programming. While they have overlapping functionalities, they also have distinct differences that make each platform unique.
1. Integration of Code Repository vs. Q&A Platform: GitHub primarily serves as a code repository and version control system, allowing users to collaborate on projects, track changes, and manage code. It emphasizes on code hosting, error tracking, and project management. On the other hand, Stack Overflow is primarily a Q&A platform where developers can ask questions and get solutions from the community. It focuses on knowledge sharing, troubleshooting, and providing detailed answers to programming queries.
2. Collaboration and Project Management vs. Problem Solving: GitHub offers robust collaboration tools such as branching, merging, and pull requests, making it easier for teams to work together on codebases. It also provides project management features like issue tracking, milestones, and wikis to streamline the development process. Stack Overflow, on the other hand, focuses on problem-solving aspects, with a strong emphasis on providing answers, solutions, and insights to specific programming problems.
3. Code Hosting and Version Control vs. Community-driven Knowledge Sharing: GitHub excels in providing a dedicated platform for hosting code and version control, allowing developers to manage their codebases efficiently. With powerful Git integration, it supports distributed development workflows. Stack Overflow, on the contrary, relies on the expertise of the community members to answer queries and share knowledge. It has a reputation-based system, where users gain reputation points for valuable contributions, ensuring high-quality answers.
4. Public and Private Repositories vs. Public Q&A: GitHub allows developers to host both public and private repositories. Public repositories are visible and accessible to everyone, fostering open-source collaboration and community-driven development. Stack Overflow, however, is entirely public and focuses on Q&A interactions. The questions, answers, and discussions on Stack Overflow are accessible to everyone, encouraging transparency and knowledge dissemination.
5. Extensive Documentation vs. In-depth Discussions: GitHub offers extensive documentation capabilities, allowing developers to maintain README files, wiki pages, and project documentation, effectively showcasing project details and instructions. Stack Overflow focuses more on in-depth discussions around specific programming issues, where users can ask detailed questions and receive thorough answers with code snippets, screenshots, and relevant examples.
6. Focus on Code Review vs. Community Voting: GitHub emphasizes code reviews as an integral part of the development process. It provides features like pull requests and code comments, enabling team members to discuss and improve the codebase collaboratively. Stack Overflow, on the other hand, relies on a community voting system, where users can upvote/downvote questions and answers based on their usefulness. This mechanism ensures valuable content surfaces, and irrelevant or incorrect information is appropriately filtered.
In summary, GitHub is primarily focused on code hosting, version control, and collaboration, whereas Stack Overflow serves as a Q&A platform with a strong emphasis on knowledge sharing and problem-solving within the developer community.
Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?
If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:
- Pick the correct target branch
- Make Drafts explicit
- Name things properly
- Ask help for tools
- Remove the noise
- Fetch necessary data
- Understand Mergeability
- Pass the message
- Add screenshots
- Be found in the future
- Comment inline in your changes
Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D
What else do you review before asking for code review?
Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.
SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.
As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?
One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i
is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.
It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.
Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.
Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!
At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.
Pros of GitHub
- Open source friendly1.8K
- Easy source control1.5K
- Nice UI1.3K
- Great for team collaboration1.1K
- Easy setup867
- Issue tracker504
- Great community487
- Remote team collaboration483
- Great way to share449
- Pull request and features planning442
- Just works147
- Integrated in many tools132
- Free Public Repos122
- Github Gists116
- Github pages113
- Easy to find repos83
- Open source62
- Easy to find projects60
- It's free60
- Network effect56
- Extensive API49
- Organizations43
- Branching42
- Developer Profiles34
- Git Powered Wikis32
- Great for collaboration30
- It's fun24
- Clean interface and good integrations23
- Community SDK involvement22
- Learn from others source code20
- Because: Git16
- It integrates directly with Azure14
- Standard in Open Source collab10
- Newsfeed10
- Fast8
- Beautiful user experience8
- It integrates directly with Hipchat8
- Easy to discover new code libraries7
- Smooth integration6
- Integrations6
- Graphs6
- Nice API6
- It's awesome6
- Cloud SCM6
- Quick Onboarding5
- Remarkable uptime5
- CI Integration5
- Reliable5
- Hands down best online Git service available5
- Version Control4
- Unlimited Public Repos at no cost4
- Simple but powerful4
- Loved by developers4
- Free HTML hosting4
- Uses GIT4
- Security options4
- Easy to use and collaborate with others4
- Easy deployment via SSH3
- Ci3
- IAM3
- Nice to use3
- Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects2
- Beautiful2
- Self Hosted2
- Issues tracker2
- Easy source control and everything is backed up2
- Never dethroned2
- All in one development service2
- Good tools support2
- Free HTML hostings2
- IAM integration2
- Very Easy to Use2
- Easy to use2
- Leads the copycats2
- Free private repos2
- Profound1
- Dasf1
Pros of Stack Overflow
- Scary smart community257
- Knows all206
- Voting system142
- Good questions134
- Good SEO83
- Addictive22
- Tight focus14
- Share and gain knowledge10
- Useful7
- Fast loading3
- Gamification2
- Knows everyone1
- Experts share experience and answer questions1
- Stack overflow to developers As google to net surfers1
- Questions answered quickly1
- No annoying ads1
- No spam1
- Fast community response1
- Good moderators1
- Quick answers from users1
- Good answers1
- User reputation ranking1
- Efficient answers1
- Leading developer community1
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Cons of GitHub
- Owned by micrcosoft55
- Expensive for lone developers that want private repos38
- Relatively slow product/feature release cadence15
- API scoping could be better10
- Only 3 collaborators for private repos9
- Limited featureset for issue management4
- Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens3
- GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions2
- No multilingual interface1
- Takes a long time to commit1
- Expensive1
Cons of Stack Overflow
- Not welcoming to newbies3
- Unfair downvoting3
- Unfriendly moderators3
- No opinion based questions3
- Mean users3
- Limited to types of questions it can accept2