First of all, I don't think it matters whether a man or a woman wrote the code. I for one didn't know when I read the link, until I saw this discussion.
There are several aspects to this. The obvious one is that anything you put out there is going to get criticisms. Look at Barack Obama being called a socialist muslim atheist, who attended Rev. Wright's church for 20 years. The point is, if you step up, not everyone will like you.
Now, being denounced by people who are well-respected and with a big following can hurt. Then again, I doubt it's very permanent. If this is the ONLY thing you've ever done, then you should just do more things.
If you are that sensitive about something, don't release it under your own name. Invent a handle just for this project. Kind of like a limited liability company. The art of the pseudonym goes back hundreds of years.
Also keep in mind the culture. Unfortunately in my opinion, the coder culture is full of elitist snark against noobs who are too visible. Maybe because it's so male. I have seen far worse reactions to people's code on IRC, especially some assholes in EFNet chatrooms. Freenode seems a bit nicer and well-behaved. But saying ridiculously quirky offensive things in response to code is something coders do to each other all the time. It's just the way many of them speak. I personally don't, and I find it extremely annoying, and I wish it would go away, but it's the reality.
Now as far as open source ... I remember releasing what I considered to be a very impressive (at the time) framework, http://phponpie.com , and although I got pretty positive responses http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1682933, and constructive criticism, it didn't really take off. I tried a bit of self-promotion and it didn't pay off either. So to me, releasing open source is kind of a lot like releasing any product ... if people don't really want it, then you're putting in a lot of effort for almost no return. Think about product-market fit in open source, just like anywhere else.
There are several aspects to this. The obvious one is that anything you put out there is going to get criticisms. Look at Barack Obama being called a socialist muslim atheist, who attended Rev. Wright's church for 20 years. The point is, if you step up, not everyone will like you.
Now, being denounced by people who are well-respected and with a big following can hurt. Then again, I doubt it's very permanent. If this is the ONLY thing you've ever done, then you should just do more things.
If you are that sensitive about something, don't release it under your own name. Invent a handle just for this project. Kind of like a limited liability company. The art of the pseudonym goes back hundreds of years.
Also keep in mind the culture. Unfortunately in my opinion, the coder culture is full of elitist snark against noobs who are too visible. Maybe because it's so male. I have seen far worse reactions to people's code on IRC, especially some assholes in EFNet chatrooms. Freenode seems a bit nicer and well-behaved. But saying ridiculously quirky offensive things in response to code is something coders do to each other all the time. It's just the way many of them speak. I personally don't, and I find it extremely annoying, and I wish it would go away, but it's the reality.
Now as far as open source ... I remember releasing what I considered to be a very impressive (at the time) framework, http://phponpie.com , and although I got pretty positive responses http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1682933, and constructive criticism, it didn't really take off. I tried a bit of self-promotion and it didn't pay off either. So to me, releasing open source is kind of a lot like releasing any product ... if people don't really want it, then you're putting in a lot of effort for almost no return. Think about product-market fit in open source, just like anywhere else.