What you see on Github is people's polished code - you don't see what they are throwing away. They might be better, but you are probably looking at some of the code they are most proud of.
(Actually, for my github/bitbucket page this is no longer the case. After I watched this video, I started publishing as much of my code as possible, if it actually did what it was supposed to)
Thanks for that link--the first 5-7 minutes nicely covers the "what if someone judges me by the quality of my code" fear that lots of us have.
I was pleased to see your parenthetical comment as well--one of the hobby horses I ride is to try to convince people to release more of their "hacky" code than they currently do.
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At the same time I posit that there is much useful/functional (albeit ugly) code sitting trapped on hard-drives around the world because the developer is concerned a future employer/client [or peer] might judge them for it if it were released.
While this sort of filtering by prospective employer/client may well happen, I think the average developer concerned about such things has a much higher standard for work than needed.
I've tried to adjust my thinking to "Well, it works for me, that means it might be useful to someone else, so I'll put it up there. If some future employer/client can't see that it's a quick hack and not representative of my daily work, well, that probably says more about them."
I'd rather find your 10-line hack to get that obscure API working and build on it, than nothing at all.
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What you see on Github is people's polished code - you don't see what they are throwing away. They might be better, but you are probably looking at some of the code they are most proud of.
(Actually, for my github/bitbucket page this is no longer the case. After I watched this video, I started publishing as much of my code as possible, if it actually did what it was supposed to)