So, let me start by saying that gists are awesome. There's no faster, simpler way for me to share code snippts with syntax highlighting for all to see, clone, comment on and assist with.
Marvellous.
But something has been bothering me about gists for some time. A "Gist" in Github parlance, is a git repository backed file (or set of files) which can be edited in the browser by the owner and commented on by other users. Each edit is a github commit (with a commit SHA) and you can link people to different versions of a diff via a URL.
What I wish you could do is link people to diffs themselves, as you can with a full github repository.
github.com/user/repo/compare/SHA_FROM...SHA_TO
The above will give you the highlighted diff of changes between any two commits in a way you can easily share and refer to.
Why not make this possible with a gist? Often times people will link me their gist code and I will try to help solve their problem. This involves forking it then editing my copy and linking them to my changes. Useful, but they only see my new version - not the individual line changes.
If I clone the gist repo and push it to github as a full repo on my profile then I can achieve this but it seems a little clunky and excessive. There are browser extensions that will let you diff gists but again, it seems like overkill.
Why not bring the full repo API to gists so we can treat them like first-class citizens?
Well that must be what their 100 million is going to be spend on ;)