Take the 2-minute tour ×

I hire a lot of programmers for tiny tasks. I very clearly specify that the tasks can only be completed by making a pull request on GitHub. Unfortunatelly, so many programmers do not know Git and often the programmers cannot complete the project due to not understanding/being willing to learn Git, even after they have undertaken the programming of the task. This is bad both for me and for the programmers. Sometimes I end up arguing for why it is inefficient that they just send me a zip file containing the code.

Therefore, I am looking for an online service to certify that the programmers know how to make a pull request so I do not waste their nor my time. The certificate should be free for the coders, but may cost me. It is important that the course just focuses on exactly what is needed to make a clean pull request so it should not take more than 5 minutes to go through.

Does such a thing exist?

share|improve this question
Have them submit their bid as a Git pull request? –  Jörg W Mittag Sep 16 '12 at 8:21
@JörgWMittag Wow! Excellently creative! I will accept it if it was an answer! –  David Sep 16 '12 at 8:46
It was only meant as a joke but here ya go :-) –  Jörg W Mittag Sep 16 '12 at 8:55
I could have implemented the same using a mail-in service, taking me a month of setup in order to scale etc. While this solution is better and takes me a setup of writing one single sentence in the specifications. –  David Sep 16 '12 at 8:57
add comment

1 Answer

up vote 17 down vote accepted

Have them submit their bid as a GitHub pull request.

Note: this obviously requires private repositories. If that requirement is too strong, just have them submit something else.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


