I was wondering why users develop programs in private and why some (like myself) like developing programs in public. Which suits you better public or private? (I would love to read your opinion )

**As in public I mean GitHub and forums**

Private. At least until a release, that is.
I kind of don't want people to see my code when it's not finalized, 'cause it's always horrible.

In public because then it can usually get more attention, and I can chat with people about it.

I have done both! There are many projects that I do myself that are just learning experiences for me- I usually work through those myself in private because I have no expectation of finishing them.

There are other projects that I develop in private because I don't really want slew of "oh that already exists" comments. I find these to be pretty demotivating and generally unhelpful. I'm not too interested in "pushing boundaries", so to speak, but it's kinda annoying to me to have the solution to a problem presented on a silver platter unless I'm actively looking for it.

This is the biggest reason, though. It's a fair bit of pressure to put something on the forums- or even in public channels- because then I feel more obligated to follow through and provide consistent updates (on the flip side of the coin, this is an extremely effective way to finish more projects). As much as I would enjoy doing my personal projects full time (actually I wouldn't enjoy this very much, and I'd love to discuss this where it would be on-topic to do so), programming things that I share here is something I do when I have the time and inclination, to paraphrase ~volunteers. I try to minimize commitments and thus pressure on myself when it comes to cemetech things- it's not really a wonderful feeling to have all the pressures of normal life on top of all of the pressures related to all of my unfinished projects

Additionally, some projects I do involve secret things I can't tell you about. Shush

In response to Michael0x18- I strongly disagree with the practice of hiding the source because it's bad/sloppy/messy. If anything, these codebases are the ones I would share because they're the ones I could learn the most from having more experienced members of the community look at.

Well, for me it's more of a "hack it together into something usable," then "clean it up and present it to people to avoid the inevitable 'that's disgusting' comments"

I'm all about that private life.

I don't code a whole lot so doing so privately puts less pressure on me to do upkeep. I also had some pretty bad practices back when I first started a few projects, so I regrettably can't make them public unless I erase the entire git history before today (though I fixed it a few years ago, for simplicities sake I'd just flatten it to the most recent version).

But yeah, privately. One day I'll have public projects.

I usually don't bother uploading source code until the project is done — if at all.

However, putting updates on forums is a fun way to show off my work if I'm proud of it. Personally, I don't mind too much about leaving projects unfinished, since that's just the natural life cycle of a programmer:

- Begin Project
- Work Lots
- Stop Before Finished
- Repeat

It's understandable when someone doesn't finish a project. You don't even really need to finish a project for people to enjoy it; you can just put out a demo/prototype of the work you have so far. For me, it's just about starting projects that I want to finish and forcing myself to work on it through mid-development hell if I really want to see that end-product.

I generally like to work on a project in secret for a while to see if I like it/have something to show/know I will actually do it before posting it on Cemetech/Github. I like to post my projects if I think that they might amount to something, but I don't like posting something if I'm not sure if I'll give it up in a few days.

I develope programs mostly unpublic.
Now I'm making one program in public (posting its progress on Cemetech) to just try this way out.
I got the experience that developing programs public really generates more attention.
But if you don't finish your project, then many people will be disappointed...
So I like more the unpublic way, because if you can not finish a project, only you will know this
and you don't have to be ashamed for this.

public starts with a p, not a b.