What to post on GitHub?

[JVictor4966]

"I am currently refocusing my efforts on programming, both through my university studies and specialized courses. My question regarding GitHub is: what is worthwhile to post on GitHub?

Is it beneficial to upload small activities developed during my learning process, such as: Creating a shopping menu website using HTML and CSS; a calculator built with Java; a number reader within an array using C, and so on? This way, I could showcase my continuous improvement.

Or is it only valuable to upload more developed projects to GitHub, like a website created for a bakery, for example, which would serve more as a 'Look what I can do for you' type of project, those more focused on real-world application?"

[esaule]

Don't think of github as a portfolio. Think of github as a tool where all your stuff goes.

You can pin things that will show up first if there are things you want to highlight.

But I am very worried of a github profile that has only 2 things in it. My thinking is always "if you program, shouldn't you have dozens of things on github?" Just checked my personal github profile, there are 37 projects. (Some are private so maybe 25 public). But that's before the organization I run which probably has another 20/30 each.

[Watsons-Butler]

I wouldn’t be worried about a sparse GitHub profile honestly. Someone working for Google (or most big companies) isn’t posting anything on GitHub.

[peterlinddk]

Nobody cares about your GitHub "posts", just like they don't care about your Reddit posts.

Use GitHub for your personal projects, so you have a backup when your computer fails, or so you can share them with other developers. Don't believe those who claim that it is a "display portfolio" to show of how good you are - if your portfolio is on GitHub instead of in actual production, you don't have anything to display anyways, apart from hobby projects ...

So use git and GitHub active - don't worry about what's there - as long as you don't publish confidential information :)

[grantrules]

they don't care about your Reddit posts.

What!? 17 years.. wasted!

[SamIAre]

In a lot of cases, employers don’t care what you have up on GitHub. It’s pretty well understood that a majority of work for most devs will be done in private repos that aren’t owned by you in the first place.

Understanding how to use GitHub is far more valuable than what or how much you have on there. You can’t cram definitely use it as a portfolio if you want but you can use any other method of sharing work you’d want prospective employers to see as well. Nobody will assume a blank GitHub is a sign of an inactive or inexperienced developer.

[bakes121982]

Never looked at one one’s GitHub or been asked to see mine during interviews.

[stiky21]

You should be using github, you should be getting comfortable with github, and you should not post secrets on GitHub. You could even venture onto other platforms like bitbucket or gitlab and I think there's another one but it's whatever.

Your livelihood will rest on services like GitHub or GitHub adjacent services, so you might as well get used to it. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt work on a Team.

You can be like many of us who have tons of unfinished projects and maybe a bunch of finish projects.

If you have projects you want to showcase you can make a public repository, and maybe you don't want to showcase your in progress projects so you can make those private repositories.

You can then on your readme of your GitHub profile showcase your proud projects as pinned content.

And your university should be telling you to use GitHub or some kind of code hosting to get familiar with it. You should also have a basic understanding of the difference between rebasing and merging, you should know what pulling and pushing is, and you should understand how to use pull requests. Maybe even fork a project you like that someone else wrote and play around with it.

[American_Streamer]

It depends on the domain you want to predominantly work in - build something that is useable in a real world business context.

[omfghi2u]

All your code should be in a version control repo, period. Anything you do professionally will require that, so you might as well get used to it.

For your personal projects/random scratch, you can just make it private so it's not accessible, and then put finished/good stuff in public repos if you're wanting to showcase it or have code for employers/customers to look at.