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Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

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Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#1

Post by sodokuwizard »

I'm a junior. Truth be told, I don't really care if professionals/adults see my code or pick it apart/mock it/fork it or whatever. All my repos are private just because I worry about other students being lazy and just ripping my hard work and claiming it as their own. That really pisses me off when I hear some horror stories like that.

Is this unfounded? Or do I have a right for some concern? It's obviously easier for viewers to just see public code repos and browse without ever requesting access so I know I'm losing some traffic (from my portfolio site)

I was thinking the alternative would be just linking my demo on my portfolio site as a proof of concept that yes I made it, yes it works, and if you're curious , here's a link to the code u can request independently of github.

Thank you in advance.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#2

Post by noir_lord »

One of the things you learn as you get older is other people don't think about you (or at all) as much you think they do/will.

We are often our own worst critics - put your stuff out there, there is little to lose and some upside, if someone likes your demo and clicks through to see the code and can see it then that's a low friction path, by having to request access most people won't or will - but forget all about it etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#4

Post by benoau »

Reminds of the thought experiment, "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"...

People you never heard of are open-sourcing projects you'll never find every day, there are hundreds of millions of repositories on GitHub and very few of them will ever be seen by humans who didn't write them, let alone humans looking to pretend they did.

Presumably someone looking at your portfolio will be reviewing CVs to hire? I think throwing up a barrier on them evaluating your code will hurt you much more than the rest of the world being able to see it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#5

Post by sodokuwizard »

noir_lord wrote: post #2

One of the things you learn as you get older is other people don't think about you (or at all) as much you think they do/will. We are often our own worst critics - put your stuff out there, there is little to lose and some upside, if someone likes your demo and clicks through to see the code and can see it then that's a low friction path, by having to request access most people won't or will - but forget all about it…

thank you , yeah I think im overthinking this

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#6

Post by sodokuwizard »

benoau wrote: post #4

Reminds of the thought experiment, "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"... People you never heard of are open-sourcing projects you'll never find every day, there are hundreds of millions of repositories on GitHub and very few of them will ever be seen by humans who didn't write them, let alone humans looking to pretend they did. Presumably someone looking at your portf…

thats very true , and a good way of looking at it from a practical perspective

thank you

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#7

Post by latexr »

I’ve had several people steal my open-source code for different projects before. I’m talking copying (not cloning) the whole thing, changing the credit to their name, making no other modifications, and then republishing on their account.

Fortunately they never gained much traction. The ones I know about I blocked on GitHub with a note. No idea if they ever found out or if they tried workarounds, but I figured there’s not a lot more I could do about it and it’s not worth the headache.

I continue to share openly.

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#8

Post by sodokuwizard »

latexr wrote: post #7

I’ve had several people steal my open-source code for different projects before. I’m talking copying (not cloning) the whole thing, changing the credit to their name, making no other modifications, and then republishing on their account. Fortunately they never gained much traction. The ones I know about I blocked on GitHub with a note. No idea if they ever found out or if they tried workarounds, but I figured there’s…

do u find it typically only happened on projects that gained traction in the first place?

Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

#9

Post by delaminator »

Truth: no-one really cares about your code

We publish code so others can see it, the lazy and the productive.

Lazy people do not prosper, so don't waste your energy thinking about them.

Why do you want to publish yours, just as a portfolio? Then make a portfolio.

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