back
1 comments
I think it's a mixture of two things:

One is a, perhaps misguided, internal fear of being judged. Another one is that prospective employers sometimes look at one's github history.

It's not necessarily misguided. Geeks love to cut up other geeks.

As the recipient of a fair bit of that stuff, over the years, it has hardened my resolve to:

A) Do a top-notch job on all my code; regardless of whether or not anyone else will ever see it it; and

2) Not pass public negative judgement, in a specific way, on others' code (unless, of course, I am planning to use it).

Positive judgement is all good. I will sometimes make generalized "kids, these days" or "get off my lawn" statements. I may have specific targets, but I keep things vague.

As a manager for 25 years, I learned that carrots tend to yield better long-term results than sticks.

If a young programmer releases something that they think will "change the world," but is, in fact, just another wheel, I see geeks pile on them mercilessly.

I feel that it is better to praise the good work, and gently point them towards the previous wheels.

But I'm a fairly abnormal geek.

I've also open-sourced almost all my work for the last couple of decades.

> bad quality of your code from N years ago

> Do a top-notch job on all my code

If you're like most above-average programmers, you constantly evolve. Your code from N years ago should look worse than the code you write today, otherwise you're not really improving are you?

So you completely missed the initial point made by FartyMcFarter, that old code looks worse than what you write today and people might judge you for it.

> So you completely missed the initial point made by FartyMcFarter

>> Geeks love to cut up other geeks.

I'll just leave that out there, then...

Not sure what you're talking about. The person you replied to has the username FartyMcFarter, not sure who's doing the "cutting" here. It's also not even relevant to the general point in this sub-thread...
Above average would imply only people better than a normal developer will evolve. Everyone below/above will get better or worse (bad habits creep in)