Fun story about that: In Ruby 2.x, the version GitHub originally launched with, every object implemented the method `id`, which returned the object id (in 3.x, it was renamed to `object_id`). Every object had this id, ActiveRecord models, strings, floats, integers, booleans, etc. Some objects had fixed object ids, like `true.object_id #=> 20`, `false.object_id #=> 0`, `123.object_id #=> 247 (2n+1)`. The `object_id` for `nil` is `4`.

Yehuda Katz was the first external user of GitHub after the cofounders, so his github user id is `4`.

The way Rails works, if you want to look up a user record, you do it by id:

    author = comment.author
    user = User.find(author.id)

Now, if there was some bug, and for some reason a comment had no author, `comment.author` would return `nil`, `nil.id` would return `4`, and the UI would show Yehuda as the author in the UI. People would ask, "Who is this Yehuda guy, and why is he commenting on my PRs?"

1,202 if we're bragging.

TBH I'm not super invested in github. I pay for it (smallest plan) and use it as a repository and for forking other projects occasionally, and for hosting some small-time static sites. I've never really needed any of it's other features. Every time I go to github.com there's more and more cruft though, which to me means that I'm not their target customer and they will inevitably either alienate me or jack up their prices. Happens every time there's an acquisition so I'm kind of used to it now.

Github has remained surprisingly useful for quite a while post M$ purchase, but I'm old enough to know that everything M$ touches eventually goes to crap. It's like a law.

I remember using CVS and Subversion though, with very limited hosted options, and I thought Github was the bees knees at the time.

Surprised to find I am #79.

I think that was down to being in a particular IRC channel when CW & co. were building it.

Mine is 2041.

When I was working at Microsoft I got transferred over to GitHub for awhile and someone there noticed my ID and made a big deal out of me having a 4-digit ID. :)

I never thought about it before then.

I'm 13936 and I felt like I was SO LATE to the party when I signed up.

Thanks for sharing that link. My GitHub ID is 484.

I had no idea that I joined so early. It says I joined in 20/2/2008. I guess I was following some of the founders' work in Rails when GitHub was announced and must have signed up shortly after it got started.

Genuinely surprised to be just over 10k too! Felt late!

No idea how my two character handle made it through… Probably the wrong thread to ask anyone at GH to allow me to block notifications anytime anyone mentions "@ts" but I've come to accept it at this point, lol.

I was late to the party: 457,207

Created at 2010-10-27T23:42:22Z. 16 years! What a wild ride. I used to use bitbucket a ton back then. I loved it.

https://api.github.com/users/steveadams

Genuinely surprised that I'm only 2,187. Weird to think about how quickly I must have jumped on it.

My user id is in the 2,660,000s, 2012 here and I joined when I was 13.

hah, my cheat here is https://github.com/YOURHANDLE.png

Will redirect to an image file whose title is your user ID! :D

I can't believe I joined Github back in 2009. I was a hardcore Mercurial fan and user back then. :)

April 27th 2010 and I felt pretty good getting a five character name (my own name). My ID is 254XXX

10126 here. I wouldn't have guessed it was that low.

Around 40000 and a real name with 4 digits. Thought I was late.

Woah, January 2009 (in the 40,000s), like some others I felt I was late to the party. I guess not :).

And here I thought I was doing well at 47979. That was January 2009, so not too bad.

wow, I'm in the 6.3 million group, 2014. I am surprised it's both that low and that old. Nothing compared to 5 or 6 digits, though. :D

Thanks for the link.

ID: 67,498 Created: 2009-03-26

17 years, a month and two days ago.

Nice, mine is 5082

133882 / Oct 1st 2009

You're going to crash the server.

926648 checking in.

I had just tried asking Gemini to help me get there, and it kept telling me to read line 2 of github.com, as if they were serving JSON on their homepage. :facepalm:

366; nbd

https://api.github.com/users/nullstyle