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Comment by graue | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of people saying you're going to keep personal projects to yourself (instead of putting them on GitHub or similar) because of this fracas.

Please don't. The Twitter snark isn't normal, it's an exceptional case. It wouldn't be on the front page of HN if that kind of behavior were the norm. And it's the jerks on Twitter who came out looking bad here, not the author of the code.

I really like how GitHub has encouraged people to err on the side of releasing their personal experiments. I was doing it myself in pre-GitHub days by publishing Darcs repo URLs on my website, but it didn't have the social aspect and Darcs never caught on like Git has. It's lovely to see the idea of "share all your code, by default" so validated as it is on GitHub.

Whether or not you release your code, assholes will still exist and they'll still find a way to be assholes. So don't let them ruin a good thing.

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The Twitter snark isn't normal, it's an exceptional case.

No, this isn't true. It's completely normal. It's been normal since long before Twitter. In exactly the same way high school bullying is normal, this is most definitely (a) prevalent, and (b) a problem. But it won't change, because people tolerate it.

You want me to open up my personal projects? It's not going to happen. It won't happen because we live in an ecosystem where the top dog is the one who barks the loudest, not the one who's most productive. People pay attention to what other people say. And there is nothing anyone could say about personal projects except "Pretty cool" or "Damn, what a steaming pile". The first is nice, but I'll get by without it. The second serves only to lower me and my ideas. I don't want my capabilities (ideas) to be constrained by others' lack of imagination.

Can you link to other examples of this happening?

You can visit Twitter periodically for a week and see this happening everywhere, programming and dev hash tags included (heck, a lot of the trending topics on Twitter are hugely racist or sexist).

This is why I recently left Twitter; it's just a breeding ground for smartass one-liners in hopes of retweets rather than intelligent conversation. I don't buy the idea that "this is just the medium" because it's easier to be mean than it is to be nice. If you want to have an argument with someone, write it out somewhere else and tweet the link to them.

Even if you're only following prominent people in your industry, you see some really embarrassing back-and-forths. I didn't want to get myself involved in the ones dealing with my friends and people I enjoyed because I have no idea who I will run into throughout my career, so I deleted my account.

You could just as easily say the first is encouraging, and the second is ignorable, so you should make it public.

the second is ignorable, so you should just make it public.

I wish it were that easy. Other people'e negativity just... gets to you.

The only way I've found to deal with it is to run away from it until I have a project I truly feel will help the world (even in some small way). Then I'll happily face the negativity.

> It's been normal since long before Twitter.

Exactly. And before GitHub. And before open source. And because haters will hate no matter what, we shouldn't let them stop us from sharing what we build and learn.

Heh, I must not be following the right persons then cause it's pretty common among the people I follow.

That might be, actually! I do make a habit of unfollowing anyone on social media who's consistently negative (esp. in unconstructive ways). I recommend it.

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