Maybe the UX is not great, but surely having to type "httpie/httpie" would have given me a pause.
Regardless, to make mistakes is human. What I don't really like is how the author starts attacking Github and Microsoft, just because they can't afford to fix the author's mistake. A huge red flag for me.
Once you do it a few times, writing the repo names means nothing. You have to do it on your repo with 0 followers just making it public. It’s not very notable unless you’re new to Github.
My advice is for Github to tell you that you’re losing 53,000 stars (not just “all your stars”) to help knock you out of autopilot.
I don’t get the finger pointing though. Obviously they messed up, it’s the entire post. But it’s also a good moment to reflect on how UX can be used to prevent people from messing up.
What should the threshold be? 53,000 stars? 50,000 stars? 25,000? 100? No matter what number you pick, there will be someone with fewer stars who considers their stars important enough to merit a warning.
Unless you set the threshold to 1, in which case it's just more meaningless noise, like the repository name (apparently) is.
They didn't say so, but 100% they copy-pasted the name from the prompt. I always do. They didn't type manually it in a way that would help them catch the error. That's a big reason that "enter this thing: ______" isn't foolproof. Perhaps it should at least be made unselectable.
Regardless, to make mistakes is human. What I don't really like is how the author starts attacking Github and Microsoft, just because they can't afford to fix the author's mistake. A huge red flag for me.