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I seek out feedback from a limited number of people, in a controlled way, when I'm working on my own projects. At least 90% of it gets filed away in my mind as

I seek out feedback from a limited number of people, in a controlled way, when I'm working on my own projects. At least 90% of it gets filed away in my mind as valid advice, but not necessarily given the structure of what's already built, and not necessarily something I'm going to implement. A lot of it may be sound for version 2.0, but I don't need to debate the priorities. What feedback I get that shows me better ways of doing things often gets used in the next project I build. When I find myself in the hot seat answering to questions about why code was structured this way or that, I usually already want to move on from the project, and it feels like a hostile situation. I know I can always learn and improve from feedback, but oftentimes my intention in putting something out is not to generate feedback but just to make it available. Unfortunately, I've found that most of the time this decays into situations where I have to defend my choices. Which I'll be the first to admit are often made on the spur, because if I were planning on other people picking apart my coding decisions I wouldn't be able to code my side projects nearly as quickly. [Frequently I think this is because people need to prove they can do something better than I did, and have to grind that axe against my work; which takes whatever utility I might have made and turns it into a pissing contest]. But I just don't want to subject myself to that shit anymore, and the world can get on fine without my code. tl/dr, the hostility and negativity that usually comes along w/ people giving their opinions makes me not want to share my work with them.

Zambyte 3y ago
A bit meta, but have situations like this happened publicly for you? I would be interested in reading some of the Helpful Feedback™ that you've dealt with
- noduerme 3y ago
  Not so much publicly as most of these happened pre-2010. But like, I think when I finally decided to keep my shit to myself was when I went off on my own initiative and built a solar system construction tool for Chris Roberts to play with, a day or two after I finished his HUD demo for Star Citizen. This wasn't open source, obviously. I built in a lot of neat features for a builder tool that I would love to have if I were making a sprawling galactic open game. Chris is, obviously, a legendary coder. But he seemed to get really pissed off when I showed him this project, and told me THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY WE'RE BUILDING ANY OF THIS USING FLASH. In truth, it was only a flash project to let you drag planets and moons around, size them, set them in orbits around a star until you were happy with the solar system's dynamics, and then output a slim XML file describing each system you built. I thought it was cool. At the same time I was being publicly attacked and on/off praised all over the user forums for HUD things I'd written that no one had actually seen (and never ended up seeing). It wasn't the first time I had a problem the public as a coder, because I wrote and ran - meaning, stayed awake and watched, 24/7 - the first Bitcoin casino of any size for a couple years, and a lot of the early players were devs of some description. It was helpful, and I shared my code with players. But it was always a case of "if I were you, I would've..." Prior to that I had a major run-in against Fox NewsCorp when a whole platform I'd developed solo for an indie game got sold to them and they thought it was my responsibility to explain my code to them. Their strategy to get me to comply with this was to offer me half my normal hourly rate and ask me to sign a contract stating that all my intellectual property belonged to them. No one in that case ever said my code was bad, they just couldn't get a team of 10 coders to understand it so they shut it down and lost the $500k they'd paid for it. Actually, the response to the non-commercial projects I've put out personally has been fairly "meh" in the last few years - I haven't really promoted them and presumably no one wants or needs them. I think I got like +2 votes on the last thing I showed HN. I have no problem contributing on other people's projects, but it's just a fix here and there if I see something. But the reason I didn't show the code on the thing I put up on HN last? It's that the two people who saw it would undoubtedly just tear my code to pieces, and I have moved on to other things. /rant. Sorry.
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing :) I'm honestly a bit young and haven't experienced such negative feedback yet. I hope I wouldn't take it personally, but I can see why that may be hard, especially coming from someone you respect like that.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      just write something great for everything you're asked to do. And don't let them treat you like a replaceable part.

Zambyte 3y ago

A bit meta, but have situations like this happened publicly for you? I would be interested in reading some of the Helpful Feedback™ that you've dealt with

noduerme 3y ago
Not so much publicly as most of these happened pre-2010. But like, I think when I finally decided to keep my shit to myself was when I went off on my own initiative and built a solar system construction tool for Chris Roberts to play with, a day or two after I finished his HUD demo for Star Citizen. This wasn't open source, obviously. I built in a lot of neat features for a builder tool that I would love to have if I were making a sprawling galactic open game. Chris is, obviously, a legendary coder. But he seemed to get really pissed off when I showed him this project, and told me THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY WE'RE BUILDING ANY OF THIS USING FLASH. In truth, it was only a flash project to let you drag planets and moons around, size them, set them in orbits around a star until you were happy with the solar system's dynamics, and then output a slim XML file describing each system you built. I thought it was cool. At the same time I was being publicly attacked and on/off praised all over the user forums for HUD things I'd written that no one had actually seen (and never ended up seeing). It wasn't the first time I had a problem the public as a coder, because I wrote and ran - meaning, stayed awake and watched, 24/7 - the first Bitcoin casino of any size for a couple years, and a lot of the early players were devs of some description. It was helpful, and I shared my code with players. But it was always a case of "if I were you, I would've..." Prior to that I had a major run-in against Fox NewsCorp when a whole platform I'd developed solo for an indie game got sold to them and they thought it was my responsibility to explain my code to them. Their strategy to get me to comply with this was to offer me half my normal hourly rate and ask me to sign a contract stating that all my intellectual property belonged to them. No one in that case ever said my code was bad, they just couldn't get a team of 10 coders to understand it so they shut it down and lost the $500k they'd paid for it. Actually, the response to the non-commercial projects I've put out personally has been fairly "meh" in the last few years - I haven't really promoted them and presumably no one wants or needs them. I think I got like +2 votes on the last thing I showed HN. I have no problem contributing on other people's projects, but it's just a fix here and there if I see something. But the reason I didn't show the code on the thing I put up on HN last? It's that the two people who saw it would undoubtedly just tear my code to pieces, and I have moved on to other things. /rant. Sorry.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing :) I'm honestly a bit young and haven't experienced such negative feedback yet. I hope I wouldn't take it personally, but I can see why that may be hard, especially coming from someone you respect like that.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    just write something great for everything you're asked to do. And don't let them treat you like a replaceable part.