Comment by pornel

If you're a junior now, and think your code is worth stealing, it's probably only a matter of time before you gain more experience, and instead feel sorry for everyone who copied your earlier code (please don't take it personally, this is not a diss. It's typical for programmers to grow, try more approaches, and see better solutions in hindsight).

The lazy cheaters only cheat themselves out of getting experience and learning by writing the code themselves. It doesn't even matter whether you publish your code or not, because they'll just steal from someone else, or more likely mindlessly copypaste AI slop instead. If someone can't write non-trivial code themselves to begin with, they won't be able to properly extend and maintain it either, so their ripoff project won't be successful.

Additionally, you'll find that most programmers don't want to even look at your code. It feels harder and less fun to understand someone else's code than to write one's own. Everyone thinks their own solution is the best: it's more clever and has more features than the primitive toys other people wrote, while at the same time it's simpler and more focused than the overcomplicated bloat other people wrote.