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Comment by quadrifoliate | Hacker News Reader

An addition that most posts, including this would benefit from:

Be incredibly kind when judging other people for their projects. What goes around comes back around.

IMO a lot of the problem is not in finding things to blog about, but the fact that the Internet hive mind will casually toss off incredibly unkind criticism about your projects.

I remember https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/ making the rounds almost ten years ago, and it played a big part in making me and many others nervous about exposing our projects to the world. The fact that there was any debate at all around whether or not the people criticizing that project uninvited was terrifying.

Of course, I have developed a thicker skin since then. And things are a lot better in 2022, and I imagine (or at least hope) that most people around here would not have such negative reactions to a hobbyist project. But it's good to remind ourselves every now and then.*

View on HN

I've experienced this when some of my personal projects made it on HN and Reddit. While they were 90% positive experiences, it was also a lesson in patience to refrain from correcting people who made drive-by criticisms and assumptions that were factually wrong, which they'd know if they had worked in the same domains the projects exist in or had read the READMEs.

Even then, those were good experiences, because it let me appreciate and discern between constructive criticism and criticism from those who don't really care and just want to complain on the internet.

Internet is a harsh place. But I think after some time one can get used to it.

I used to be (and probably still am to some degree) very sensitive of criticism, both online and in the real world. However, after spending a fair amount of time hanging out in some fairly unmoderated online communities, I think I've developed a somewhat stoic attitude towards any input I get.

In unmoderated online communities, people just say what's on their mind. And sometimes they say hurtful things, and you try to engage them in discussion of why they think so, because you can't stand the thought of someone thinking bad about you. Often they refuse to discuss anyway, and just insult you more instead, leading to endless frustration. After some time you just accept that some people aren't even interested in a discussion, and it's pointless to even try to engage them. They just want to insult for the sake of insulting, and their words and opinions are (should be) meaningless to you. The right way to handle them is to just ignore them. Don't cast pears before swine, and all that jazz.

People who hate on projects are those that have never attempted to create something on their own. It's kind of like how the easiest person to sell something to is a salesman. Most people's default reaction to anything is scepticism. People who have tried to create something on their own, and undoubtedly encountered other's scepticism, can skip the apprehensive stage and get to the meat of a project with an open mind.

If only it were so simple. For a contradiction, just see the GP's link to harthur's blog. One of the critics is Steve Klabnik, who has definitely created things on his own.

Sometimes all sorts of people thoughtlessly act like jerks.

While it is true that this is a thing that happens which can be very demotivating, for me i think the more demotivating thing is the idea that i'll do all this work writing stuff down, and nobody will care.

And unfortunately nobody caring is by far the most likely outcome.

I usually tell myself that my blog post is first and foremost for myself to better reflect and understand what i learned. That it is an end in itself and still worthwhile even if nobody reads it. Nonetheless i still find this the most demotivating part of keeping a blog.

This should also be observed on HN. I have seen too many Show HN posts with no constructive criticism with the only comment deriding a technical choice / language.

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