My recommendation is don’t internalize negative feedback from people who won’t make the time to work with you to improve. Absorb knowledge on people who invest in you.
Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
41–50 of 100 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#42Older programmer: Nobody gives a shit about your code and nobody thinks about you as much you think they do :)
Practically it may be worth keeping code for a particular class private for the duration of the term, semester whatever so you dont get into a sticky situation where a classmate copies it and now youre defending against plagiarism and have to prove to the professor you wrote it first.
But really beyond that, nobody cares.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#43If someone else steals your work, you should be proud. They found it to be valuable. If they managed to sell it or build something with it, they’ve demonstrated that you can do the same. Use it as a learning experience. Keep in mind that you are in control of what people are allowed to do with your software. By default, your code is unlicensed even if it is public, which means no one else can distribute it or change…
> If someone else steals your work, you should be proud
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” ― Oscar Wilde
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#44What do you fear?
> worry about other students being lazy and just ripping my hard work and claiming it as their own.
First of all, the cheaters will never read you, they'll just use AI.
Good news, your code is likely to never be read by anyone but you.
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." — Oscar Wilde
By being private, you're just not being talked about.
>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.
I'll give you an even better path. Use AI to make something of size. Build in public. Who cares, if someone steals it, they are only stealing from AI and could have just gone to AI to begin with. If you get criticized, they arent criticizing you, they are criticizing some version of an AI model.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#45I recall in a college programming course in the late 80s where the professor would humiliate those who wrote terrible code riddled with mistakes. The other students didn't appreciate that but it didn't make them work harder. They just tried copying each other and everybody else eventually realizing I could program better than most. So they'd sit next to me and try to get me to help them in class. Needless to say I gave them incorrect advice and they got screamed at by the woman Prof. Made me realize people will take the easy way out.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#46Don’t worry about others. Just share your stuff. Here is who will look at your code:
1) unusually good interviewers. These will glance through your repo for 30-120 seconds, checking for a) clear code style, b) clear ideas, and c) good documentation. Nobody but influencers will do a DEEP code review of code they’re not being paid to review.
2) people on HN or Reddit if you write an interesting blog post and link the underlying code.
It’s usually true that we are our own worst critics. This is an order of magnitude truer for developer portfolios.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#47You can open source your code without explicitly sharing it. I started putting out the source code to my side projects and no one cares about it really. Is someone ripping it off and not respecting the license? Who knows… it’s a big internet and probably won’t negatively affect my life.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#48I wouldn’t worry about students. They won’t be hurting you, only themselves. If the goal is to learn, they aren’t learning. This will either mean programming is a random class they’re taking, not their career, so who cares… or they’ll have a really hard time later in life when they will need to sink or swim in a real job, having not first developed the skills. That’s not a problem for you.
It’s also much more likely they will go to AI these days; the odds of them searching and landing on your repo to use are almost 0. If they do, I imagine most schools would scan for direct copies of existing code.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#49The others students will get code from chatgpt way faster than from your code.
If you are afraid that people will think this code is not yours, sign your commits, it's unlikely they will take the time to clone your repo and remake it with new signatures.
But honestly, if it's such a source of stress for you, don't share it. It's ok to not share code. There is no rules that say you have to.
Just because most of us are into FOSS and open source doesn't mean we will less of you if you are not.
Re: Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
#50I wouldn’t worry about students. They won’t be hurting you, only themselves. If the goal is to learn, they aren’t learning. This will either mean programming is a random class they’re taking, not their career, so who cares… or they’ll have a really hard time later in life when they will need to sink or swim in a real job, having not first developed the skills. That’s not a problem for you. It’s also much more likely…
It's considered my responsibility to protect my labwork at my school, and I could get in trouble if someone else plagiarized it from GitHub.