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Discussion on: Tips to get Visibility + Feedback to your GitHub project

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aidenybai profile image
Aiden Bai

For me, it provides validation that my project is useful. Otherwise, it's just a metric of "new activity," and can help find contributors.

For others, it depends.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

That explains what starring is and why people do it, but not why you're actively trying to make it happen.

Isn't it something that should be happening organically - and not be something you're actively pushing for and chasing? Doing that seems to lower it to the level of fishing for likes on Facebook or Instagram, robbing it of any real meaning as the indicator you describe

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aidenybai profile image
Aiden Bai

Generally you don't actively make it happen - sure, projects will grow with popularity eventually, but not all of us have that long of a time to "lock-in" to a project. Giving it an initial push will allow for more attention and usage.

I guess this point is very subjective, as it really just depends on the goal of your project. Are you just trying to get stars to put it on your resume? Or are you just trying to have fun working on your project and get some people to try it out.

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abh1navv profile image
Abhinav Pandey

I agree. Getting appreciated at early stages is very important to stay motivated. Pushing your project isn't just a way to get stars but also a way to get feedback.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

I think if you need stars as validation to stay motivated, you should probably be doing something else.

Feedback is useful, but that is an entirely separate thing to stars

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

As for usefulness... who cares? The most enjoyable projects (for me at least - and I'm not the only one) are usually those that are essentially toys - you make them and play with them because it's fun and interesting.

Programming shouldn't be a chore, or something you feel you have to do, or motivate yourself to do. The learning and discovery should be driven by curiosity and real enjoyment, not the expectation of validation or reward

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aidenybai profile image
Aiden Bai • Edited

Programming shouldn't be a chore, or something you feel you have to do, or motivate yourself to do. The learning and discovery should be driven by curiosity and real enjoyment, not the expectation of validation or reward

I totally agree! I think most, if not all of us program like this. But your argument goes astray when you claim that "if you have fun programming, then you are just a validation seeker and shouldn't care about usefulness." This is just completely false! A significant portion of developers, myself included, love their work and help others (in fact, I worked on a OSS project non-stop for ~9 months without much external feedback just because I enjoyed it), but also want feedback and validation.

I encourage you to try to make a bigger project that isn't a toy to try it out to understand my perspective - if you haven't already.