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by yuktrn 948 days ago
I still struggle after 15 years into programming, and I never published or finished anything because of "judgement anxiety". I waste days, weeks, months writing and rewriting code and then I decide to abandon it because "other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever".
4 comments
musicale 947 days ago
You may not realize just how terrible much of production code actually is! ;-)

There is some source code I've looked at that I thought was clear and easy to understand (at the time at least. I also like simple C/C++ code that compiles with "make", ideally with minimal #ifdefs and without lengthy configure scripts.) This is very rare in my experience, although I really like to see it!

Seriously, building things that are fun and interesting to you and getting them to work is one of the best things you can do. Once you have something working then you can decide whether you can just clean up your existing implementation or whether you want to reorganize it or rewrite it completely, but you'll be at the point where you understand your problem and its solution.

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_lvbh 947 days ago
> other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever

When I first started pushing out shit code on GitHub, I did it under a pseudonym and never tied it to my real identity. I think that really helps when first getting started since you know it’ll never affect you personally. After getting the hang of it, then perhaps tie that to yourself.

But to be honest, I doubt anyone cares much about your/my code nor would they bother judging it.

Of course, I’ve only been programming for ~5 years so I might be missing stuff.

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ted_bunny 948 days ago
Humility is my most used tool. Pick up lots of new things, embrace being a beginner.
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Freedom2 948 days ago
> "other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever"

Those who put down others or leave nonconstructive feedback, even HN commenters, are not worth your time worrying over.

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