Hacker News Reader

Comment by atum47 | Hacker News Reader

I once created a simple counter [1]. I used it to remind me of eating every two hours. I thought to myself "it's a good counter, I'll show it to people" then posted it on HN. People were like "that is just a counter, why are you showing us that?" So i kind of stop sharing everything, haha.

But my GitHub used to be a replica of my projects folder, i would upload everything. I don't do that as much now a days.

1 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/simpleCounter

View on HN

I know how you feel. I tend to think like everything I do is insignificant and not worth sharing. As a hobbyist programmer I only work on things in my free time. I used to not publish stuff on GitHub because I felt my projects were incomplete, too small, too unpolished, too unmaintained. I've never submitted my projects here and only mention them in comments when they're relevant and posting them is easier than explaining. I started making a deliberate effort to change that in the past few years. I've repeatedly discovered that people notice what you do when you put yourself out there.

Years ago I bought a Clevo-based laptop from a brazilian manufacturer, reverse engineered the keyboard LEDs and wrote a Linux user space driver for it. I just published it on GitHub and forgot about it, assuming no one would ever care. One day I opened my email and discovered I somehow had users and someone even built a GUI around my little program. I was actually a little embarrassed that someone had posted an issue asking me how to use the thing and I didn't even see it.

I mentioned another Linux project here in comments, someone submitted it and I got to engage with the community about it. Recently someone submitted another project of mine, a programming language, without me talking about it. Seriously made my day when I opened HN and saw my project on the front page. Couldn't even believe it at first.

It takes a certain boldness to put oneself out there. I'm always ready for negativity and criticism. Still, the results can be very nice.

I relate to people not giving a shit about one's creations. It has caused me to reconsider the self-hosting and blogging that I do.

I decided to give my website one year of an honest chance. I'll install basic analytics so I can see what, if anything people are interested in, and if I'm not satisfied or have a hint as to what about me or my stuff that people like, I'm out.

There's a point where sharing is painful due to the way prior things shared have been interpreted. There's no therapy or fix for that. People either care about you and your stuff, or they don't.

I've learned people just don't give a shit, even those allegedly close to me.

hey, I (would like to) care about you!

Your reply has been on my mind for days. Why did you write this? I'm a stranger on a website, I could skin cats and eat babies for all we know. It comes across as insincere, but I have no reason to be rude to you. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I hope you understand my confusion and don't take it as an attack.

> So i kind of stop sharing everything, haha. I'd like to encourage you as well as myself, don't let reality beat you :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com