Now that I think about it maybe they just need an "awesome bar" for github; put in a sha, branch name, issue, tag, pull request, etc and it can auto-complete and take you there.
Also the network view could be really useful for managing projects if it were much faster and slightly better...
In general I just think that there are way too many similarly sized/colored buttons spread all over the place, so I never know where to look for what I need, and I can't ever quite tell where I am without much work.
I think the mental model of how to view and navigate the repo/network is not transparent or consistent. If they could nail that it would really help a ton.
I agree that this should spur the Github developers to re-consider their current design, but I see nothing wrong with the general concept of using URL:s for navigating, just as I prefer the Unix shell over GUI:s for many tasks.
I do the same. Probably browsers should have some support for this stuff. What I mean is that if I always visit: foobar.com/verb/<something> and urls where it's clear that there is a fixed part and a variable one, maybe the browser could help you writing this stuff easily, so that you start typing "github commit" and something to just fill with the missing pieces appear.