I’m writing this while I’m pondering whether a project of mine is ready for its first release, 0.1. I don’t like to rush things out, even though I do believe in Release early, release often, so I’ve been thinking about whether it is time or not… and that led me to a different train of thought I wanted to share with you, especially people out there who, like me, are amateurs with little experience and who only write small projects.

There are impressive projects out there. Not just the famous ones. There are amazing programmers out there doing stuff you (and I) watch in awe, thinking we’re never going to pull something like that out. There are developers out there who code in unexpected languages, others who have contributed huge platforms for others to use, others who have deep knowledge about low level quirks or algorithms… and at least to me, I’ve felt disheartened more than once, feeling like a fraud and feeling that your projects don’t deserve any attention or shouldn’t be published. I’ve felt ridiculous after comparing myself to programmers whose work I’ve admired.

I wanted to tell you that the feeling is understandable, but remember your path is yours. Your motivations for programming are yours as well. I’m not a professional programmer and probably won’t ever be, so I’m just trying to have fun and coding has a meditative property to it for me that calms me down and helps me focus. Your reasons and what you feel when programming is entirely yours and probably different. Maybe you do want a career, maybe circumstances threw you into it, who knows.

However, honor your projects, no matter how big or small. They’re a part of you. If you publish them on a public repo, do it with pride: you wrote that. It might not be the next Linux for the rest of the world, but please look at it as an important part of your journey. Keep those projects tidy, though. Even if it’s a simple shell script, please fix the bugs, keep the documentation updated, or archive the project if you don’t feel maintaining it anymore. Treat your projects with care, love, and seriousness: you never know if someday someone might approach you to package that simple project because they liked it.

Every line of code you write, every commit, every stupid bug you introduced and later fixed, everything makes up your story. We are not static creatures, we’re made of our journeys. You are a programmer if you write programs and have respect for the craft.

Remember: that little program you wrote 5 years ago paved the way to what you are, do, and know today. Don’t make the mistake I made some time ago of deleting everything I coded, in shame, because of a very bad case of internalized mysogyny and imposter syndrome. I regret it a lot. Every repository you’ve worked on is a child of your creativity, which ultimately is our strongest power as humans.