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The theme of all of this isn't just to signal. It's that putting yourself out there will cause you to bend and grow. Over and over I read testimonials of peop

by samspot 12y ago

The theme of all of this isn't just to signal. It's that putting yourself out there will cause you to bend and grow. Over and over I read testimonials of people with low confidence who decided to do something like this and found it incredibly fulfilling. Don't just do the things you've always done. Stretch yourself, and you might be amazed what you can accomplish. Blogging improves your writing ability at the very least, and can also cause you to think more critically about your ideas. If you happen to build some influence or good relationships, even better. Obviously if you aren't interested in any of that, there is nothing wrong with spending the time the way you want to spend it. But it's not about signaling or influence, at least as I interpret it.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
It's unfortunate that someone downvoted you, I've tried to negate that. The only reason I made a comment to this effect is that I've noticed an uptick in articles about how Github is your resume/marketing yourself/marketing your OSS/how you should only work on 'important' OSS/some other silly notion. I want to believe this isn't a problem, but with open source powering so much, it appears that people want to be the next DHH. I think there is something to worrying about software shifting to a heavily reputation-based economy (as opposed to one oriented around making things). Namely, in that shift, it rewards people who generate noise, regardless of the amount of signal contained. Polluting the well, in this case, results in everyone having to output a certain amount of signaling just to keep up. It's entirely possible I am projecting some here, as I've struggled with this myself. I just don't want to always concerned with this tripe, because it's not the same at all as actually making software.
- bollockitis 12y ago
  samspot is dead on here, at least from my perspective. I am very private and have suffered from social anxiety for years. I don't use Facebook because I am overly sensitive to the reactions of others (no likes? everyone hates me and thinks I'm stupid). I spend far too much time thinking about what others think of me, so my natural inclination is to completely remove myself from public view at all opportunities. I don't use GitHub for this reason. I'd like to contribute and become part of a community, but I'm so terrified of being judged that I never step forward. So I completely understand the author's attempts to go public. It isn't about being the next DHH, it's about overcoming the fear of rejection. I have been considering "going public" for years for this very reason.
  - bennyg 12y ago
    Just do it. Seriously. What's the worst that could happen about pushing some open source code on GitHub? You don't have to start by contributing to openssl or something of similar magnitude. Just push some stuff to your personal one. Trust me, I graduated college with an art degree and some of my earliest GitHub stuff shows this. But I keep pushing, literally. One of my babies has 1300+ stars and that's awesome to me. I don't think of it like validation, but more like "holy shit a lot of people like this." Some of my libraries are sitting at 0 stars, and that's ok.
  - samspot 12y ago
    Freaked me out a bit saying I was dead, I appear to be alive again, at least from checking with some random devices. I'm not sure if this describes you, but I can be pretty thin skinned on the internet, which often discourages me from posting. I write things and delete them more often than I hit submit. One nice thing about going public is it's unlikely anyone will notice you for a while. Even patio11 says only his brother looked at his blog for a few years (IIRC).
    - patio11 12y ago
      Even patio11 says only his brother looked at his blog for a few years (IIRC). If only getting visitors were as easy as being related to them! No, seriously speaking, my blog had perhaps 200~300 visitors for the average article from 2006 through, hmm, late 2009 or so? (What changed? A combination of discovering HN, going full time, changing my writing style to exclusively focus on the 4k to 8k word essay that I feel is generally my best work, and a minor refocusing on topics.)
drdeadringer 12y ago
I find blogging for blogging's sake to be just noise. When I have something to share, I'll share; when I don't, I don't. Confidence has little to do with it.

by samspot 12y ago

mattgreenrocks 12y ago

It's unfortunate that someone downvoted you, I've tried to negate that. The only reason I made a comment to this effect is that I've noticed an uptick in articles about how Github is your resume/marketing yourself/marketing your OSS/how you should only work on 'important' OSS/some other silly notion. I want to believe this isn't a problem, but with open source powering so much, it appears that people want to be the next DHH. I think there is something to worrying about software shifting to a heavily reputation-based economy (as opposed to one oriented around making things). Namely, in that shift, it rewards people who generate noise, regardless of the amount of signal contained. Polluting the well, in this case, results in everyone having to output a certain amount of signaling just to keep up. It's entirely possible I am projecting some here, as I've struggled with this myself. I just don't want to always concerned with this tripe, because it's not the same at all as actually making software.

bollockitis 12y ago
samspot is dead on here, at least from my perspective. I am very private and have suffered from social anxiety for years. I don't use Facebook because I am overly sensitive to the reactions of others (no likes? everyone hates me and thinks I'm stupid). I spend far too much time thinking about what others think of me, so my natural inclination is to completely remove myself from public view at all opportunities. I don't use GitHub for this reason. I'd like to contribute and become part of a community, but I'm so terrified of being judged that I never step forward. So I completely understand the author's attempts to go public. It isn't about being the next DHH, it's about overcoming the fear of rejection. I have been considering "going public" for years for this very reason.
- bennyg 12y ago
  Just do it. Seriously. What's the worst that could happen about pushing some open source code on GitHub? You don't have to start by contributing to openssl or something of similar magnitude. Just push some stuff to your personal one. Trust me, I graduated college with an art degree and some of my earliest GitHub stuff shows this. But I keep pushing, literally. One of my babies has 1300+ stars and that's awesome to me. I don't think of it like validation, but more like "holy shit a lot of people like this." Some of my libraries are sitting at 0 stars, and that's ok.
- samspot 12y ago
  Freaked me out a bit saying I was dead, I appear to be alive again, at least from checking with some random devices. I'm not sure if this describes you, but I can be pretty thin skinned on the internet, which often discourages me from posting. I write things and delete them more often than I hit submit. One nice thing about going public is it's unlikely anyone will notice you for a while. Even patio11 says only his brother looked at his blog for a few years (IIRC).
  - patio11 12y ago
    Even patio11 says only his brother looked at his blog for a few years (IIRC). If only getting visitors were as easy as being related to them! No, seriously speaking, my blog had perhaps 200~300 visitors for the average article from 2006 through, hmm, late 2009 or so? (What changed? A combination of discovering HN, going full time, changing my writing style to exclusively focus on the 4k to 8k word essay that I feel is generally my best work, and a minor refocusing on topics.)

drdeadringer 12y ago

I find blogging for blogging's sake to be just noise. When I have something to share, I'll share; when I don't, I don't. Confidence has little to do with it.