Visualizing Developer Life With GitHub Activity Graphs

Show me your commit frequency, I’ll tell you who you are

I find GitHub activity graphs strangely beautiful. In principle, our commit patterns can reveal much about our relations to work and software development. However, from a purely scientific perspective, this is almost equivalent of reading the tea leaves. (So naturally, this is frequently used by recruiters to gauge the aptitude of a developer.)

In this totally unscientific and not very serious post, I would like to share my favorite patterns with you. Each one is a complete story in blips, waiting to be explored.

Work-life balance

Don’t tell me you are not jealous right away by looking at this. If you are past your 20s, probably this is what you strive for. Consistent periods of intense productivity, interrupted by the well-deserved vacations. The icing on the cake are those beautiful bands on the top and the bottom. That, my friends, is something you’ll never have: the weekends.

Burnout

On the other end of the spectrum, you can see the burnt out developer. Intensive and long period of productivity, followed by a long stare into the abyss, occasionally a brief surge. This was probably you at some point. (For sure, it…