The Zen of GitHub

“Whether you call it taste, culture, or zen, there are underlying assumptions that members of an organization rely on to resolve ambiguity in pursuit of the organization’s mission.”
– Ben Balter

The GitHub API consolidates the Zen of GitHub in its own codebase, in 14 aphorisms:

• Responsive is better than fast
• It’s not fully shipped until it’s fast
• Anything added dilutes everything else
• Practicality beats purity
• Approachable is better than simple
• Mind your words, they are important
• Speak like a human
• Half measures are as bad as nothing at all
• Encourage flow
• Non-blocking is better than blocking
• Favor focus over features
• Avoid administrative distraction
• Design for failure
• Keep it logically awesome

We recommend you to read about the story behind the Zen of Github in these posts:

• Taste and The Zen of GitHub, by @kneath
• The Zen of GitHub, by @benbalter

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Last edited by emilybrick on January 19, 2023