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Ask HN: Is all code worth sharing?

3 points by jfe ↗ HN
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?

5 comments

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zwiteof
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
jfe
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.

[dead] jfe
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.

[dead] jfe
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.

cbhl
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.