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Interfaces and Repositories

Texts to have read:

Work to have achieved:

Plan for the Day

We've had a request to record today's session. Is everyone okay with that?
  1. GitHub, part 2 (~15-20 min)
    • what is a repository?
    • a demo of diffs
  2. Multiple views of the same files: web, Finder/Explorer, GH Desktop
  3. One more view: Atom interface
  4. Shareback (~15 min)
  5. HW Preview

Welcome back! I really enjoyed reading all the introductory posts and letters; thank you for those. If you haven’t had a chance to get to know your classmates’ opening posts, I encourage you to check them out!

1. GitHub, part 2

In those intro posts, we saw that GitHub can host a discussion forum, so in that sense it’s a community website: it makes media social.

But its core functionality is meant to solve a different media problem: tracking changes to files over time.

webcomic shows a series of panels renaming final.doc to final_rev2, final_rev_6.comments, and so on to absurdity
from PhD Comics by Jorge Cham (2012).

Renaming ever more files isn’t only messy to keep track of: it also eats up your storage space, especially if you’re working with multimedia. What git allows you to do instead is to track the differences between versions of files with the same filename.

Let's check out the GitHub.com web interface, and see how it works: https://github.com/benmiller314/text-demo

Initial questions to ask of any app:

  • How is the space laid out?
  • What’s given the most prominent visual focus? Secondary focus?
  • What features/tools do you have quick access to?

2. Your turn

Time to take these abstractions and put them into practice, using our key terms to help us see differently.

We’ll be working in groups. I’ve used your Tech Comfort Survey responses from Lesson 1 to build breakout rooms where at least one person has prior GitHub experience, so I hope you’ll be able to help each other where needed!

Head to https://github.com/benmiller314/cdm-gh-practice, where you'll find more instructions for what to do next – starting with forking the repo. (Thanks, group GitHub anchors!) Start by skimming through the instructions in the README file, so you know where this is headed. (It'll spare you confusion later.) I'll give you the overview while we're still together:
  1. Make a copy of the repository for your group
  2. Write a story, one line per person, committing every time
  3. File a pull request to merge it back to my repo

Read through the details, then follow the steps. We’ll work in Breakout Rooms for about 10-15 minutes, then report back. Don’t forget that you can use Zoom chat and screenshare to show your groupmates what you’re doing.

Call me if you need me! Otherwise, I’ll be floating from group to group.

HW for next time:

  • Please read / play through Tyler Su’s “Playing Lev Manovich”, which defines and illustrates five principles of new media. Be ready to talk about what you noticed, and what you wondered.
  • Listen to the following recordings:
  • Write a short blog post to the appropriate thread on the issue queue: What do you notice, i.e. what stands out while reading or listening? What does that suggest, or what does it make you wonder?