Last night I stumbled upon my first open movie! It was an animation of mandelbrot sets, all made out of ASCII. It was based on the
ASCII mandelbrot code I wrote for Linux Magazine many years ago. And while this curses version animated nicely, and "did stuff", the workings behind it were awful :( So many poor instances of style, and much different to my current work.
So, do I spend the time making it look presently, or just leave it? My Open Source leanings say I should give it to the world. My Open Source leanings say I shouldn't be embarrased, and certainly shouldn't provide binary only versions.
My instinct says "no"! The Internet has a long memory, and if this is the only thing Google picks up then I'll be known for writing poor C++ code. Since I make a living from my expertise in this area (6 years+) this is not a good pension plan. I'll release it when I have some free time. Which will probably be around my retirement.
The point to all of this? For one: stop asking me when the ASCII mandlebrot movie will be out ;) But secondly, to what extent are good idea, interesting code, or other hidden gems will remain hidden because most of us have mortgages? I could include links to my more modern styles, but as the tabloid press has amply demonstrated, people will only member the bad stuff. This is not a risk I'm wanting to take.