How do you learn to share what you do, when you're not used to sharing at all? Should one accept that noone will read 99% of what one shares and just use sharing as a way to record and reflect on own process?
I like the concept of this, but it does feel horrific to share on most social media. I already share a lot of work I do in local dev chats etc - but there's something about the X algorithm that makes sharing anything feel terrible.
Although weirdly i've found youtube to be really good in terms of getting audience for smaller works, and annoyingly linkedin seems to actually share inside your network.
There's just something about Twitter/X that is a complete shout into the void when posting about in-progress dev work that feels awful.
I very much agree with this author, and the sort of open source ethos it embodies.
However, as a corporate stooge I have a hard time balancing my natural desire to work with the garage door up and my "neighbors" (legitimate) need for me to turn my terrible garage band music down and only show up after practice is over (when I have a nice deliverable).
Does anyone have any tips for finding the right balance? What is the professional development teams version of working with the garage door open?
Came to post about the site. My first reaction to the layout was "Oh, must be optimized for mobile." Then I clicked a link in one of the articles and it opened alongside it. Very slick. I enjoy this! It enables that "wiki deep dive" style of browsing. I suddenly want to read all your notes.
Could someone from california explain "garage door up" reference? Is it like pretending to be early apple or HP, and starting chip factory on backyard reference? Or some sort of open door policy?
I just do not get it. If you own a house, you have $1m capital to deploy towards business. You do not have to invite random people and dogs from street, to steal or pee on your expensive equipment.
If you actually have serious workshop like restoring cars or building something, rent a warehouse. HOAs have strict rules about chemicals, noise and vans parked on drive way!
And if your goal is to reach people, there is much better way to do that!
I don't know if I trust this as much as I did in the past. There's lots of competition out there. Lots of AI companies that want to slurp up data. It's a nice warm and fuzzy thing to say but I don't think it helps you, it just helps competitors get the jump on you.
I think the best way to do this today is having your own site, be it in the shape of a blog, digital garden or whatever and then syndicate, following POSSE[0], in case of wanting community or distribution.
I like reddit, but feel the moderation model is too skewed towards censorship. I created an informational post recently on a niche subreddit and it seemed well received, but then was deleted by a mod with no explanation.
For sharing digital creations, X is still the #1 place to do it for visibility and discovery. I get a surprising amount of positive interactions there.
Against the grain here but I feel like it needs to be popularised. But have you considered trying to do it in person? Going to shared spaces, meetups, etc and talking to people.
It’s almost a dying practice but I feel it’s massively valuable in a way that can’t be replicated online.
I don't know how publicly you mean, but I do this on the maker community I'm a part of (shout out to our general maker newsletter, sign up at https://www.themakery.cc/ for fun links).
I also do something like it on my website, but that's writeups of the finished product. The community gets to see the raw state of what I'm making, throughout the process.
I've found Mastodon to be the best platform for this in 2026. If you're working on something deeply technical, there is a good chance the upstream maintainers for whatever you're using and tons of academics in the field will be active on there. Except maybe for something LLM-related, that's still firmly in the Twittersphere, even in 2026.
With the real time translations that they just introduced where people are interacting in all different languages now, it's the best it's ever been. The conversations that people are getting to have across Japan, France, Spain, South Korea, etc are really incredible.
Goes both ways. I had a phase of trying this and found I had to invest as much or more effort figuring out how to document stuff for the eyes of an outside observer as I did on the actual task. Guess maybe the answer in my case is to not make it accessible, but does that defeat the purpose?
I'm kind of disappointed that this is about social media presence and not the physical world. I am a big proponent of working with your garage door up, quite literally, and I make it a point to do projects in my garage or my driveway, visible to my neighbors. I also make it a point to interact with my neighbors if they're doing a project and offer a hand or company (if they're interested in either). This is part of how I've built community around me in the places I live. Doing things like helping someone replace a valve cover gasket and spark plugs at 11PM so they could get to work in the morning when they were already too deep in fixing their only car; baking bread and running my smoker in the driveway and then offering BBQ sandwiches to my neighbors; setting up my jobsite table saw and miter saw in the driveway when doing home improvement projects, only to find out a neighbor is a tiler and can help me finish out my shower after I do the framing; etc.
I have found a lot of value in being open to other people, when I'm actively engaged in something. It's not even about displaying competence or showing off (which is how I look at people doing the same on social media), it's about doing your own thing in a way which is inviting rather than offputting, so if somebody wants to ask questions, give a helping hand, or just feel comfortable doing their own thing in a way that's inviting, you help create that sense of community and ambience around you. This is a stark contrast to many places around, at least the US, where something as simple as working on your car in your driveway might be punished. Community is built, and we're all part of it, and working in the open is one of the best ways to help build community.
To that point, though, there /used/ to be a place to do this online in an honest way, which was niche forums. I wrote and posted many of the how-to guides for one of the popular cheap enthusiast car platforms I used to own on the niche webforum for that platform, in part because there wasn't much material out there so I knew I'd actively be helping others to document and photograph my work for sharing online. But now those forums are mostly gone, replaced by Facebook groups, and across the net the signal to noise ratio is completely skewed. Trying to work in the open online is screaming into the void, and if someone does notice it is actively offputting because it comes off as insincere and self-aggrandizing. It is absolutely not the same as literally working with your garage door open.
I have resistance to sharing work in a way that also still protects my interest in monetizing and profiting from the work eventually. How do you all balance this? In a startup bootcamp they asked us to not worry about theft, though I feel its borderline gullible and naive to share some things.
I'll definitely steal the phrase (with attribution of course).
When I first started using Jupyter, I was curious about the idea of turning a notebook into a paper or book by hiding all of the code cells. In fact I learned how to do it, and have now forgotten.
More recently, I just share the notebook, code and all. I've learned that people like managers actually like it that way, because it gives them a feeling of involvement, like bringing them into the lab. You can read it, use it, change it, whatever you want.
Unfortunately, the climate doesn't like me working with the garage door up. During the winter, it's cold. During the summer, condensation pools on the cold floor.
This is part of the power of a makerspace, to me. To show up and work on my own thing, whether or not someone asks about it, whether or not someone offers to help. Those latter things are where I usually focus, but the first is important too.
The funny thing is, the space really has a garage door (two, in fact), and when the weather permits, we love to work with them up. Occasionally people wander by and inquire, and get a tour, and some of them have joined as members.
It definitely depends on the platform, though. On GitHub, absolutely, work with the garage door up. But on some platforms, it's the complete opposite.
Many moons ago, I was making mod for a game and had the idea to publish it on Nexus Mods [0] so that I didn't have to bother setting anything up once I actually wanted to publish the initial release of the mod. It was not at all in a working state when I made the public page for it.
Imagine my surprise when I wake up the next day and have thousands of views on the page and a dozen comments berating me for publishing a mod that doesn't work...
Ever since then, I have had problems with working with the garage door up, even though I know that it's totally acceptable on GitHub. It's habit by now to work on everything with the garage door down, just in case...
Also I think fundamentally people on nexus mode assume: the mod is there=it work
The majority of people on there are not familiar with software dev concepts, they just seek cool new content for their fav game.
I get most people don’t want to fight that perception, but it’s an opportunity to educate people on the process, and if enough people do this, it normalizes the idea of people working on things, instead of the idea that products are delivered from the heavenly forges of big tech.
It’s something I admire about the best Kickstarter projects, and the framing that the platform has provided (even if it’s marketing facade now). You post regular updates about what you’re doing, you resist the urge to look perfect, you demystify creation. I think that’s kind of important for society to trust how our modern world was made, too.
My kids are going to have an advantage in making things from scratch because they simply witness me doing it.
> it’s giving a lecture about the problems you’re pondering in the shower; it’s thinking out loud about the ways in which your project doesn’t work at all.
I'd love to do this. But I have learned that my brain does not work this way. The moment I explain my shower thought project to anyone, I immediately lose all interest in actually building it. I don't know why.
If I want to succeed building a new thing, I can not talk to anyone before I have actually built the first fully working version of it.
46 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] threadAlthough weirdly i've found youtube to be really good in terms of getting audience for smaller works, and annoyingly linkedin seems to actually share inside your network.
There's just something about Twitter/X that is a complete shout into the void when posting about in-progress dev work that feels awful.
However, as a corporate stooge I have a hard time balancing my natural desire to work with the garage door up and my "neighbors" (legitimate) need for me to turn my terrible garage band music down and only show up after practice is over (when I have a nice deliverable).
Does anyone have any tips for finding the right balance? What is the professional development teams version of working with the garage door open?
Came to post about the site. My first reaction to the layout was "Oh, must be optimized for mobile." Then I clicked a link in one of the articles and it opened alongside it. Very slick. I enjoy this! It enables that "wiki deep dive" style of browsing. I suddenly want to read all your notes.
I just do not get it. If you own a house, you have $1m capital to deploy towards business. You do not have to invite random people and dogs from street, to steal or pee on your expensive equipment.
If you actually have serious workshop like restoring cars or building something, rent a warehouse. HOAs have strict rules about chemicals, noise and vans parked on drive way!
And if your goal is to reach people, there is much better way to do that!
Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it].
Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else?
Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.
[0] https://indieweb.org/POSSE
Example, Pete's Garage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQFlaDhWsck
It’s almost a dying practice but I feel it’s massively valuable in a way that can’t be replicated online.
I also do something like it on my website, but that's writeups of the finished product. The community gets to see the raw state of what I'm making, throughout the process.
With the real time translations that they just introduced where people are interacting in all different languages now, it's the best it's ever been. The conversations that people are getting to have across Japan, France, Spain, South Korea, etc are really incredible.
I also blog, but POSSE is not as good as it could be.
I have found a lot of value in being open to other people, when I'm actively engaged in something. It's not even about displaying competence or showing off (which is how I look at people doing the same on social media), it's about doing your own thing in a way which is inviting rather than offputting, so if somebody wants to ask questions, give a helping hand, or just feel comfortable doing their own thing in a way that's inviting, you help create that sense of community and ambience around you. This is a stark contrast to many places around, at least the US, where something as simple as working on your car in your driveway might be punished. Community is built, and we're all part of it, and working in the open is one of the best ways to help build community.
To that point, though, there /used/ to be a place to do this online in an honest way, which was niche forums. I wrote and posted many of the how-to guides for one of the popular cheap enthusiast car platforms I used to own on the niche webforum for that platform, in part because there wasn't much material out there so I knew I'd actively be helping others to document and photograph my work for sharing online. But now those forums are mostly gone, replaced by Facebook groups, and across the net the signal to noise ratio is completely skewed. Trying to work in the open online is screaming into the void, and if someone does notice it is actively offputting because it comes off as insincere and self-aggrandizing. It is absolutely not the same as literally working with your garage door open.
"When I was a teenager, I read about all of these Bay Area guys that launched startups from their garage.
I thought 'Man, those guys must be really tough!'. Why? Because I'm from Canada and working in garages in the winter is really cold."
When I first started using Jupyter, I was curious about the idea of turning a notebook into a paper or book by hiding all of the code cells. In fact I learned how to do it, and have now forgotten.
More recently, I just share the notebook, code and all. I've learned that people like managers actually like it that way, because it gives them a feeling of involvement, like bringing them into the lab. You can read it, use it, change it, whatever you want.
Unfortunately, the climate doesn't like me working with the garage door up. During the winter, it's cold. During the summer, condensation pools on the cold floor.
The funny thing is, the space really has a garage door (two, in fact), and when the weather permits, we love to work with them up. Occasionally people wander by and inquire, and get a tour, and some of them have joined as members.
I want multiple ways to publish. Sometimes I wanna share images, sometimes I just wanna pipe output from a command and add some context.
Pretty frustrated of going into apps like X that break my train of thought instantly.
Many moons ago, I was making mod for a game and had the idea to publish it on Nexus Mods [0] so that I didn't have to bother setting anything up once I actually wanted to publish the initial release of the mod. It was not at all in a working state when I made the public page for it.
Imagine my surprise when I wake up the next day and have thousands of views on the page and a dozen comments berating me for publishing a mod that doesn't work...
Ever since then, I have had problems with working with the garage door up, even though I know that it's totally acceptable on GitHub. It's habit by now to work on everything with the garage door down, just in case...
[0]: https://www.nexusmods.com/
Also I think fundamentally people on nexus mode assume: the mod is there=it work The majority of people on there are not familiar with software dev concepts, they just seek cool new content for their fav game.
It’s something I admire about the best Kickstarter projects, and the framing that the platform has provided (even if it’s marketing facade now). You post regular updates about what you’re doing, you resist the urge to look perfect, you demystify creation. I think that’s kind of important for society to trust how our modern world was made, too.
My kids are going to have an advantage in making things from scratch because they simply witness me doing it.
Do these navel gazing blog posts come with any life experience?
I'd love to do this. But I have learned that my brain does not work this way. The moment I explain my shower thought project to anyone, I immediately lose all interest in actually building it. I don't know why.
If I want to succeed building a new thing, I can not talk to anyone before I have actually built the first fully working version of it.