Migrating Dillo from GitHub

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

GitHub’s JS-Heavy Frontend & Accessibility

  • Core trigger for Dillo’s move: GitHub’s interface “barely works” without JavaScript, blocking issues, PRs, and logs in a JS‑less browser.
  • Some argue this is not an accessibility problem by WCAG; others counter that requiring modern JS engines (or “JS VMs with bleeding edge features”) effectively excludes lightweight or niche browsers.
  • Several commenters feel GitHub has regressed from a fast, mostly non‑JS‑required site to sluggish, JS‑dependent pages.

React, “App‑Like” UX & Performance

  • Discussion of GitHub’s shift toward React and “app‑like” experiences: justification cited in a GitHub architecture talk (mobile as baseline, richer project UIs).
  • Many see this as fashion- or incentive-driven rather than user‑driven, noting the frontend codebase has exploded in size while feeling slower.
  • Skepticism that “app‑like” is meaningful for a code hosting website, especially when PR review and navigation are now janky.

Mobile vs Desktop Usage

  • Split views on mobile: some insist GitHub is primarily a desktop tool and optimizing for phones repeats “Windows 8” mistakes; others say they use GitHub on phones daily for notifications, issues, reviews, and even shipping code.

Alternatives & Self‑Hosting

  • Wide-ranging comparisons:
    • GitLab: seen as powerful with strong CI/CD but heavy, slow, and increasingly “slop”/enterprise‑oriented.
    • Gitea/Forgejo: praised as lightweight, easy to maintain, and resource‑frugal; some criticize their UX as rough or opinionated.
    • Gerrit, Sourcehut, Fossil, cgit also mentioned as more focused or simpler options.
  • Several users report very positive experiences self‑hosting Forgejo or GitLab; others prefer bare git+SSH with optional cgit for personal projects.

Decentralization, Federation & Single Points of Failure

  • Strong support for moving away from a single dominant forge; multiple commenters explicitly prefer a heterogeneous, federated ecosystem (Forgejo federation, etc.) over “the next GitHub.”
  • Concern about bans, policy changes, and dependency on Microsoft as strategic risks; mirroring and self‑hosting are seen as resilience measures.

Collaboration Models, CI & Issues

  • Some want “pull” workflows (email patches, offline review, tools like git‑bug or git‑appraise) instead of constant GitHub notifications (“push”).
  • CI: GitHub Actions is convenient and free but criticized as a “YAML jungle.” Forgejo Actions and GitLab CI receive praise but have quirks and limits.
  • Social problems on GitHub—drive‑by/AI PRs, noisy “good first issue” contributions, and open issues causing burnout—are cited as additional reasons to de‑centralize or lock down issue creation.
  • Dillo’s custom Markdown-based “buggy” tracker is admired as hackerish minimalism, though some doubt its scalability for rich media and larger teams.