Now they are going to show json, xml, yaml, graphviz, audio files, video files, display docx, xlsx, pptx, prettify your minified code, build a database for you from SQL backups and let you query it, set up an environment from your .env files and give you a shell prompt, show you a rendered DOM from your HTML files and virtual dom declarations, display structured data from microformats, microdata and json-ld, let you query structured data from inside files so GitHub can be really used as a database, deploy your app, run your code and search for actual and potential errors, find your lost TV remote, wash your car and cook your dinner.
This is partly serious and I think GitHub is awesome.
Zawinski's law - "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." Humorous and relevant.
Is that the same Jamie Zawinski of the "Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems." [1] fame?
I see the future of GitHub as a new type of operating system. Git as the file system for an OS isn't too surprising but starting with an open, highly collaborative network of users with many forks and interdependent repos at the file-system level makes for an OS that could barely have been imagined on paper.
If they integrate Atom online like Cloud9 then with automatic build\hosting its basically the full stack for developing and using the web where the current GitHub repo viewers are the equivalent of Finder/Explorer. The Google/MS capitulation to GitHub will be seen as a catastrophic handover of power if they can build a moat around this. Maybe the distributed and open nature of both git and the web will prevent any moat? Interesting times.
This is partly serious and I think GitHub is awesome.