1. It forces me to write a README. No matter how small the project, I afford it an introductory paragraph, installation instructions, usage instructions, and a license. Doing that all the time helps build good habits. If it hurts, I’m not doing it often enough. Doing it often enough helps overcome resistance one day when it actually counts.
2. I contribute something back. It’s not exactly curl, but who am I to judge whether my project will be too trivial to be useful for others? I prefer to leave that decision up to the visitor.
3. Future me is going to get a README for free a couple of years down the road, when the details are long forgotten.
Example: this repository [1] is for a 50-line Bash script [2].
[1]: https://github.com/claui/aws-credential-1password
[2]: https://github.com/claui/aws-credential-1password/blob/main/...
If I want to track version control across multiple machines without rolling my own git server or bothering to mark the repo private?
I don't think it's an old thing. I think it's a HN crowd not really understanding user experience thing
Github is a code repository and not a social network account, so yes many people use it for "half finished tutorials" and little exploratory non-projects up on the Internet?"
Maybe I'm getting old and no longer "with it", but to me, this is just like teenagers entering way too much personal info on social media just because there are empty text boxes available.
I have a "code" dir with dozens of subdirectories where I keep all that stuff. Some of those are local git repos because I'm starting to do something actually non-trivial there, and yes, some of those eventually get the "git remote add ..." treatment, and get published on a public code forge somewhere.