IMHO, the main advantage of github is that it is an ecosystem. This is a well-thought-out Swiss knife: a pioneering (but no longer new) PR system, convenient issues, as well as a well-formed CI system with many developed actions and free runners. In addition, it is best to use code navigation simply in a web browser. You write code, and almost everything works effortlessly. Having a sponsorship system is also great, you don't have to search for external donation platforms and post weird links in your profile/repository.

All in one, that's why developers like it so much. The obsession with AI makes me nervous, but the advantages still outweigh, as for me, the average developer. For now.

I don't agree with this at all. I think the reason Github is so prominent is the social network aspects it has built around Git, which created strong network effects that most developers are unwilling to part with. Maintainers don't want to loose their stars and the users don't want to loose the collective "audit" by the github users.

Things like number of stars on a repository, number of forks, number of issues answered, number of followers for an account. All these things are powerful indicators of quality, and like it or not are now part of modern software engineering. Developers are more likely to use a repo that has more stars than its alternatives.

I know that the code should speak for itself and one should audit their dependencies and not depend on Github stars, but in practice this is not what happens, we rely on the community.

> a pioneering (but no longer new) PR system

having used gerrit 10 years ago there's nothing about github's PRs that I like more, today.

> code navigation simply in a web browser

this is nice indeed, true.

> You write code, and almost everything works effortlessly.

if only. GHA are a hot mess because somehow we've landed in a local minimum of pretend-YAML-but-actually-shell-js-jinja-python and they have a smaller or bigger outage every other week, for years now.

> why developers like it so much

most everything else is much worse in at least one area and the most important thing it's what everyone uses. no one got fired for using github.

The big issue with Github is that they never denied feeding ai with private repositories. (Gitlab for example did that when asked). This fact alone makes many users bitter, even for organizations not using private repos per se.

> a well-formed CI system

Man :| no. I genuinely understand the convenience of using Actions, but it's a horrible product.

I'd rather solve advent of code in brainfuck than have to debug their CI workflows ever again.

> In addition, it is best to use code navigation simply in a web browser.

IMHO the vanilla Github UI sucks for code browsing since it's incredibly slow, and the search is also useless (the integrated web-vscode works much better - e.g. press '.' inside a Github project).

> as well as a well-formed CI system with many developed actions and free runners

The only good about the Github CI system are the free runners (including free Mac runners), for everything else it's objectively worse than the alternatives (like Gitlab CI).

Would you say Github has any significant advantages over Gitlab in this regard? I always found them to be on par, with incremental advantages on either side.

> a pioneering (but no longer new) PR system

Having used Forgejo with AGit now, IMO the PR experience on GitHub is not great when trying to contribute to a new project. It's just unnecessarily convoluted.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

That's not a Victorinox you're looking at, it's a cheap poorly made enshittified clone using a decades old playbook (e-e-e).

The focus on "Sponsorship buttons" and feature instead of fixing is just a waste of my time.