Posting on the internet freightens me

First of all, please understand that I’m someone who has a clear way of visualizing my thoughts, but struggles to communicate them verbally or through written text like posts. Being Dutch already brings a certain directness or bluntness into the mix, so when I try to be concise, it can sometimes come across as me being an a-hole. Sometimes that’s probably true, but most of the time, it’s not meant that way. It’s something I’ve been struggling with for about 48 trips around the sun. So I’m not trying to paint people in a bad light in this post.

What I’m trying to say is that — like anyone else — I have ideas, I have time, and I like to program. This usually results in mostly half-finished projects where interest has faded over time. I’m mostly a solo developer with — let’s be frank — no friends (or at least none in the programming world) who share my interests. That makes it hard when you get stuck or just want to know if your design ideas are actually good. With the rise of AI, I can discuss ideas with different LLMs at different levels, and ask for suggestions, corrections, or alternatives for what I want to do. I believe they are quite good at it, and considering the people I work with on a daily basis, I think they often outperform them when it comes to this kind of feedback.

So when I dive into a new idea, I tend to spend a lot of time on it — give it 110%, so to speak. Sometimes my wife has to stop me, and thankfully she takes better care of me than I do. But since I don’t have a large network of users, I struggle with reaching out to people and talking about my projects. I can try posting in some subreddits, maybe try Hacker News a couple of times in the hope it gets picked up. But beyond that… I just don’t know. It often results in just another project in the GitHub archive vault.

Six months ago, I had a problem I couldn’t solve the way I wanted, because the existing software was either too hard to set up and maintain, or didn’t provide all the features I needed. So I did what I do best: I coded. And like always, I showed it to some people who politely listened while being busy with other things, but I never got any real feedback. Of course, the odds of building a solution for someone who happens to have the exact same problem are low, so I understand that not everyone wants to spend more than five seconds looking at something they don’t care about.

And honestly, most — probably all — projects are doomed anyway. Even if you love it, most likely nobody else will. And I think that’s fine. Not all software is meant to become a big (open source) project, or something that can put food on the table if marketed correctly. It’s like the lottery: there’s a 100% guarantee that someone will win, but the odds that it will be you are tiny. The best I can do is buy many lottery tickets.

But still, like every other time, I get relatively little feedback. So I make a few posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and call it a day. But nowadays, I’m afraid to actually post things.

The reason: AI.

It seems that, like everything else in the world, things tend to become black or white. You’re either a huge fan of AI, “vibecoding” all the way — or you’re fanatically against it and would rather see it disappear. But honestly, for most people I know, it’s not that black and white. There’s a huge middle ground where developers see AI as a tool to improve their work, not replace their skills. I’m not afraid that AI will replace me. On the contrary, I think it helps me do much more in the same amount of time.

But now, anyone who posts a new project — something they’ve put a lot of care and effort into — can get dismissed instantly with comments like: “oh, vibecoded… next,” or “I spotted an em dash, this must be a bad piece of software.” It used to be that people would read the code and judge it, but now it’s just a quick grep for markers of AI usage, followed by a trip to the comment section to bash the project and the developer — without understanding how, or even if, AI was used.

And so what if it was? I’ve seen plenty of bad software created without AI. But you’re expected to pick a side, or commenters will force you into one. There’s no room left for nuance.

So this is why I’m afraid to post my project on Hacker News. It’s a security system — it uses crypto, it deals with secrets. All the red flags you can think of. I’m fully aware of that. I’ve also used AI. Does that make it “vibe-coded”? Apparently, to some people, even having a .claudeignore in your .gitignore is enough to brand you a heretic. Off to the vibecode side with you.

I don’t think my project is bad. It’s definitely not perfect (yet), but I’d argue it would take more effort to find issues than some people assume.

I use cryptography in many different ways in my daily work. I wouldn’t have been doing my job for the past five years if I weren’t at least somewhat competent at it. Do I make mistakes? Absolutely. But that’s exactly why I want feedback from others. And if I don’t have that, LLMs are, in my opinion, a good alternative. They’ve already found things I’m pretty sure our internal security team would have caught — even if they knew where to look. We’ve gained a powerful tool in recent years, if used correctly.

But understand this: people’s projects are their hobbies. Some of us hope to turn them into a living. It might be a silly app. It might be the next killer app. But nobody is forcing you to install or use our software. We’re just inviting you to take a look. Provide feedback if you like. And if not, just move on to the next post.

People shouldn’t have to be afraid to post online.