ElongatedTowel

I'm basically in the position where I feel I need to have a portfolio to have a chance to find anything better. Now, whether or not a portfolio should consist of decent but stupid code slapped on github seems up for the debate. However I'm having trouble starting projects that share this bubble between "of interest to me" and "willing to give away". I wondered if code needs to necessarily be open-source licensed if I have it open to the public. At least github seems to force it (does it?), I guess self-hosted would help with that.

Reason I'm asking is because most of the stuff I'm really interested in is code I might end up wanting to use for commercial purposes, like game and game engine code, audio libraries and shaders. Is it unreasonable to put code on the internet and expect at least some control over it? Or am I making it harder for the good guys to use the code (if by chance that would happen) while the bad guys are just going to nab it anyway?

Short preface. My life didn't go so well (my own fault). I'm not that young anymore, have barely worked in my life, school didn't go so well, had to teach myself most of the stuff I know about programming. My friends think I'm pretty good and always seem to reassure me that I know far more than most of their friends who actually went to a university.

Because most of my problems stem from lack of motivation, focus and too much perfectionism. I fear the thought of being asked "Show me what you've created". It doesn't help that my friends think I'm a good programmer if I can't prove it.

But it's not that I'm not writing code. It's just that I'm usually tearing down what I've created. Like drawing on paper, then throwing it in the trash (no matter if it's good).

There is stuff that motivates me. Game development. Procedural generation. Visualization. It's just not that related to jobs I could have a chance of getting (like web development), if there is a chance anyway.

I had the idea that I could write example implementations and visualizations of algorithms used in procedural generation. Tufte-like. Perhaps a bit more in-depth than what is on the net already. I figured it has certain qualities that appeal to me, like being kind of modular. I can write one piece without having to worry about the next one, or having a tower named "things to do" in front of me. It's also not that much code, rather the code that needs to be written has to be clean and concise.

Would that be something I can put on my CV? If so, how "much" should there be so it doesn't look like "Hey that guy wrote 10 lines of JavaScript/C++/whatever and thinks we hire him". Even if I was happy to just get an internship.

So far I've been sticking to a handful of personal preferences and tried to adhere to set standards depending on which programming language I'm using. The problem is, the number of languages I'm interested in has increased as well as my interest in open source. I'm finding myself unable to set and adhere to guidelines anymore just because I can't keep them in my head and with the rise of github it became clear that some of my personal preferences are the complete opposite of what is popular. Add errors (like YAML not working with tabs) and clashing rules (people like to use tabs and align with spaces in C++ which blows up in Python) and I end up fighting more against those rules than actually writing code.

How do programmers cope? Doing your own thing and then converting a large codebase if it goes on github doesn't really seem to work. I've been converting tabs to spaces for example in all my projects where I only have a private repository and can rewrite the history.

I'm thinking about creating guidelines I strictly adhere to while at the same time using features and settings which are the most common among people writing code (like using spaces instead of tabs). But for some languages that seems like a pretty though thing to do. Also I might be overthinking things. But there is a part in me that tries to resist because I'm giving up something I prefer. I have my editor and linters set up the way I like it, but there is a limit to what is possible and configuring them is a challenge by itself.