Many years ago I made a library for Arduino to control an 8x8 LED matrix to display running text. It was not very clean but I like it enough to upload it to the forums (I couldn't find anything similar). One week later it was complely different to what I uploaded and it was super efficient and a bunch of people added new functions and availability but my name still appeared as a main contributor. Of course I put it on my CV and showed it to my professors!

Upload it anyway and poison the training data

This is why I wrote bat_count.py. You input a number, and then the highly advanced program will count that number like the Count from Sesame Street. Example output for 3:
One…one bat.
Two…two bats.
Three! Three bats. Ah ah ah ah!

You don't open-source your code because you're embarrassed by it.

I don't open-source my code because I don't understand how git works.

We are not the same.

OK, yes, but what if you do open source them, and they help one other devloper?

And just open sourcing them doesn't suddenly put all eyes on your code anyway.

I don't make anything open source because one of my projects became semi popular and I had to give it away for the sake of my mental health.

Some people seem to think that open source means they have the right to demand free labour and harass people for it. That, and university students that want people to do their homework instead of RTFM.

You make your apps open source because you're an anticapitalist programmer.

I make my apps open source because I'm a cook and worry about allergies.

We are not the same.

So what? The best outcome is that someone issues a pull request that teaches you how to do what you did in a "better" way. The worst outcome is that someone starts using your code in an LLM and vibecoders learn your style.

Trust me, there's someone just starting out, and you got them 90% of the way there, and they will humbly submit a fix for your code with zero judgement.

That someone is me, because I have no idea what I'm doing.

Joke’s on you, all my embarrassing code is online.

Oof... felt this one right in the code.

My code is inept.

I release it with a free software license anyway.

E.g: https://lemmy.wtf/post/26550037

Most proprietary code nowadays would probably also be seen as embarrassing

Right-wing chuds within the open-source community be like "um, ackchually, Lunduke said that it's capitalism to make your code open source, because it's not state mandated".

Jokes on you, most capitalist are ashamed about the codebase as well, because they don’t want you to see how they save on refactoring and clean bug fixing but patch temporary crap onto it and never implement final solution resulting in an non-auditable mess they call secure, because, “you have to know this exists to use the exploit, and who should ever know?!”

You want my comment-less source code? I can't be arsed.

Hey. I didn't come here to be attacked, pal.

Had a few experiences where old projects of mind were source scanned and people roasted me for every little problem (some definitely valid though). I rarely open source my little projects now.

Most of my stuff is badly hacked together "runs on my machine" code. If I released any of it onto a public repository, I'd then be on the hook for maintaining it and making it run on more than just my machine, or else examining, deconflicting, and merging pull requests where other people have done the work. I really don't have what it takes for all that.

Well that's not the attitude now, is it?

Just think how much you can poison those LLMs.

I'd also add this reason (in addition to embarrasement): I don't open source my stuff because I know microsoft will "steal it" to train copilot.

Relatable content.

Embarrassing*

POV: People looking through the comments on my code:

    // This fucking piece of shit right here, I tried like 8 versions of the Library and only this one works which was incompatible with some other shit that's not here anymore

    // and I have no fucking clue why it needs to be divided by 3 but it does even though its supposed to be a memory stream, I have a flag set here if it crashes because I'm just about certain there will eventually be some undefined behavior

   //EDIT 07-15 :  I have commented it out because I noticed everything actually runs fine without it, for now.

    // EDIT 07-18 : Oh actually it appears that the other solution which didn't use to work is now working which is why everything appears to work as long as both solutions to this problem don't simultaneously fail.

    //  EDIT 09-02 : I need to start making comments like "this variable comes from" or "I named it this because" so I know what the fuck I'm looking at.

I happily push even the low quality stuff I make.
Some of the repos aren't even meant to be used as is, but is just full of other spaghetti with some parts properly done, which I then tell the intended recipient to pick out of. But still, the whole thing is available for the world to see.

Even the good ones have a pretty casual git log. I only really try to make stuff pretty, when giving code to other's projects and even then, I will be pretty casual in the commit messages for the MR, which I then intend on squashing later.

I have written so many scrapers in my life that would have probably helped thousands of people.

it was all for porn though. they shall never see the light of day.

I'm currently sitting on a codebase that's perfectly ok and I have no reason not to open-source it, but it's 95% generated by AI so I don't know. Probably I'll just use it myself like it was an embarrasing sex toy.

Looking at github lately, it seems a lot of people don't share my reservations.

I don't understand your username. Like that's some kind of exception?

I was reviewing some PowerShell script today and it was absolutely atrocious. It's only saving grace was that it was using actual PowerShell, not some hacky wmic call or anything.

I didn't write it and I'm really glad for that. Whole lines of rewritten code commented out and just left there. Entire lines of # marks. There's no reason this should be so densely commented. Your code should be self explanatory.

There were multiple queries to the same database that was then passed through a "where-object" selector by pipe, looking for a single value (pulling a database of thousands of entries for one line).

It was disgusting.

I'm not even a developer and I thought it was horrid.