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Comment by tomaskafka | Hacker News Reader

> But after reading her blogpost, her stackoverflow/github history in an attempt to understand her struggles as a self-taught programmer; I figured that there was no struggle at all! Self taught programmers are full of numerous questions, but she didn’t seem to have any! Neither is there any progression of all the tasks she did.

This is just one of possible approaches. For example, I actively ask very rarely, the most you could find on SO would be upvotes to answers.

With this approach, the author would probably conclude I didn't write my weather watchfaces myself, as there are almost no public traces of me doing so. And yet.

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-1... https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c...

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This one jumped on me too. My history would quite the same and especially when I was younger. I would never ask under anything traceable back to me publicly. And I was always searching much more then actively asking, I asked online twice my whole life and got maybe one answer total.

I would also keep stuff on my own disk until I thought it is progressed enough etc. I was too insecure to show progress, because progress contains more mistakes and I dont like looking dumb. It also makes it easier to tear you down if someone decides to.

I mean, I have no idea what the conditions of that competition were and how much alone you was supposed to do it. I have no idea how much mentoring counts as too much and how much is fine. Nor whether this crosses the line. Just that, the above suspicion is dumb.

"when I was younger" is a risky point of view: i.e. when I was younger I wrote a cycling manager game that was really a very very modded gorilla.bas, and there was no internet to use, only the inline help and that was it. that mindset of figuring things out by incremental change and debugging thoroughly sticks, and even if now I can say I'm used to stack overflow and the like I do see programmer that grew up in a fully connected social world do rely a lot more on the network to find answers than me.

Searching for answers does not leave trace. Only posting under own name does. And there are so many answers to beginners questions out there, that you rarely need to ask new one (and it is likely to be closed as duplicate or obvious homework).

The idea that every beginner programers must leave public track of beginners questions is fairly ridiculous.

i asked one question on SO a long time ago that i'm embarrassed about. i don't blame anyone for not asking with a handle that links to them. i think that just about all questions have been asked really and you can just find them with search.

but on the topic.. she's busted. there's good evidence now beyond signs like those SO/github thoughts.

Well, after a couple years of development, you have the vocabulary & terminology to search for & find your answers.

Starting out, you wouldn't have that.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a digital footprint of all your activity online.

I'm withholding judgment on if she did or did not code most of the app herself.

site's been updated. she's busted.

You might have a mentor (eg a parent) to ask instead though. Having no SO profile is not a sign you don't ask questions.

this is true of course.

and lots of people don't use github.

they're just a couple of the signs.

i could even let go that she didn't know how to express what the expression was and even not knowing how to make a string uppercase.

they're little signs but they aren't where she was eventually busted.

This is so true. I think my biggest achievement is that I evolved my ability to search. A few years ago it would take me days to find the solution to a problem, but now I find it much easier to formulate a question or Google query.

Yeah, the lack of a Stackoverflow or Github history doesn't mean someone didn't struggle as a programmer or is lying about their abilities. Maybe they just don't use the sites on a regular basis. Maybe they don't use them as a logged in member and actually get their answers as a guest based on what they typed in Google search. Or perhaps they found some other way to learn that didn't involve open source coding or asking questions online. Heck, I know I'm in that basket; the last time I asked a question on Stackoverflow was probably about two years ago, and even then that was probably the first one. And even to this day, I basically don't use Github at all, so anyone looking for my profile would also find no evidence of a 'struggle'.

There's no reason the person discussed in this story couldn't be in the same situation.

Why do people always try to inconspicuously promote their products on hacker news by posting links to them in the comments... I find this rather annoying.

If you're not shilling, you're not selling.

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