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

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

#51

Post by malux85 »

When you’re a junior it’s natural to overvalue your code, because you’re still learning this incredibly complex thing called programming, and that code took a lot of effort to produce!

But the actual truth is that the code itself is nearly worthless. The important thing is who you became when you wrote it. You learned interface abstraction, api design, how to debug, how to execute it in your head, the tooling, and most importantly you got that spark of pure joy when it finally worked.

If others copy your code they get none of that, they only get the little worthless bit, they might win a battle (cheat on an assignment) but they will loose the war (they don’t grow or experience joy) so don’t worry about it, they will flake out, while you grow and reach for even greater things!

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

#52

Post by wahnfrieden »

teddyh wrote: post #38
wahnfrieden wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What license did you use? Most licenses require that forks change the name, few require credit except for original copyright headers, and no licenses require modification

> Most licenses require that forks change the name I was under the impression that the opposite was the case; that requiring a name change was extremely rare, but some historically important free software packages had it (one such being LaTeX, IIRC), so it was, somewhat grudgingly, considered acceptable. But no normal licenses (like BSD, GPL, Apache, etc.) requires name changes today, AFAIK.

I was mistaken. GPLv3 only offers a provision to require it. Firefox also requires that the name be treated as a protected trademark. I don't know how clearly one gains rights to names of open sourced projects with typical trademark policy though. I've tended to change the name on my own forks if I am not forking just to contribute upstream, out of caution for trademark (even if unregistered) and general reputational hazards of becoming a public face for someone else's project under their chosen name.

edit: Looks like the reality is quite complex: https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#license-te... this goes into detail on each popular license

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

#53

Post by JamesBarney »

Unfounded I don't know.

But if you're taking the time to build out side projects I'd open them so you can put them on your resume. Doesn't make sense to me to hamstring your resume so some kid you don't know gets a slighter better score in some cs class.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #43
sholladay wrote: post #30

If 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

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by al_borland »

jjmarr wrote: post #50
al_borland wrote: post #48

I 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.

If that’s the school policy, then there is no fear to get over. Keep the repos private to comply with policy. That makes it easy.

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

#57

Post by hinkley »

delaminator wrote: post #9

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.

See I see this a different way.

People only read your code when something is wrong, which means they’re already annoyed before they get to your bit and if your bit is also annoying you’re going to either hear about it or get frozen out because if it.

This is at least 4x more true of tests. I’ve witnessed too many PRs where obvious problems in the tests get missed and are then found during the RCA that covers the outage the shitty tests didn’t prevent. Trying to fix a bug in someone else’s code and discovering just how terrible they are at writing tests is salt in the wounds.

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

#58

Post by tlarkworthy »

U put something out on the internet, likely no-one cares, sometimes people will point out a better way of doing it. You gain in that knowledge. I learnt a lot from public critique... it makes you better and more knowledgeable. Harness the crowd, let it out.

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

#59

Post by MrDarcy »

lelandbatey wrote: post #15
sodokuwizard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you , yeah I think im overthinking this

Echoing what others have said: just post your stuff. If you're not intentionally publicizing yourself or your work, I can nearly guarantee that no one will ever even look at your work. I've been putting up my little personal projects up on my GitHub for over ten years, and yet no one's ever come around to look at them except when I intentionally posted links to those projects on places like HN. No one's going to look…

Even if you ask people to look they won’t look. You really gotta sell yourself and have an influencer mindset to motivate someone to go look at code you’ve published.

This is it should be. It takes time and effort to try someone’s idea.

Regarding the fear someone does take it and claim it as their own. Who cares? You’re in no worse of a position than the code being private and then not doing it. It’s not relevant.

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

#60

Post by stevedsimkins »

I definitely think it’s worth sharing, especially if it’s version controlled. By making small precise commits you’re proving your steps of how you got to the end result. Even if someone copied it you still have the receipts of how you got there.

In math, half the work is proving how you got the answer. When it comes to proving your worth as a programmer, I’m a firm believer the same principle applies.

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