Ask HN: Is all code worth sharing?

3 points·jfe··4 comments

I personally believe that unless your code offers one or more of the following, you should keep it to yourself:

- a novel experience

- a solution to a previously unsolved problem

- a faster or smaller solution to a solved problem

What's your opinion?

Your requirements are from the perspective of people who view/use the code. I'd argue there are many benefits for the coder by releasing code including getting feedback from the community on aspects that could be improved or changed. This learning aspect is important as well

that may be true, but is it worth the time of the community to critique code that offers them nothing in return?

one might argue that the decision as to whether code is worth reviewing is up to the individual, and i would agree. but i would also argue that it's the responsibility of the author to decide whether or not the submission of that code in a public forum will generate more light or more heat, and filter such submissions accordingly.

How would you expect to achieve any of the things on your list prior to sharing the code with others, so that people can collaborate? You're basically implying that none of the good stuff happens after the code goes public.

I strongly disagree. For the types of code you mention we already have avenues for this -- academic papers and publications and libraries.

Publishing code, say, in a GitHub profile, can serve other purposes though. Sometimes you're applying for a job and the employer just wants to assess that you can write syntactically valid, human-readable, not-too-terrible code and use source control. For this, I'm not too terribly concerned about whether this is the millionth time solving the problem, so much as I am about excluding people who aren't ready to be interviewed by a bona fide developer.

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