I agree, and the programs that take long to make are usually the better ones ;)
I would love a publish button.
Maybe it would suffice if the programs showed up in "Recent" everytime an update is made. Though some people might abuse that.
Or, to counter that, just implement a "promote for voting" feature. Lets call it a "Publish&Promote" button that only works, say, once a day and would put it in the "Recent" list.

I really would like to see some feature to let the more complex and interesting programs have their own place to shine. It gives other people an idea what they can do eventually, even with the code on KA.

+1 Rome wasn't built in a day and similarly some programs need that extra day or two to be polished

So, completely hide the program from Public view until publishing? That's a good idea.

My idea: "Promote program for voting"
Click it. You are allowed two per 24 hours. You cannot do it if the program is above 8th place on Hot, Top, or Recent.

The problem I've seen with the computer science is that the same several people are always on the hot list. If somebody makes a really cool, really original program, they are less unlikely to make it the somebody who is always at the top of the hot list. If some programs take a few days to do, they also get lost in the recent section.

I think a better solution, though perhaps harder for them to implement; would be to create a whole new category (I would replace the recent tab with a complexity tab). Recentness is a terrible metric, as we've come to realize, for a measure of interesting. A few better metrics would be; time spent in development, complexity of the project, frequency of updates, overall size of the project (minus the comments and white space) ... Algorithms could scan our projects to make sure we aren't trolling the system by filling up a project day after day with rect(0,0,400,400); fill(255,0,0); rect(0,0,400,400); fill(255,0,0); rect(0,0,400,400); fill(255,0,0); rect(0,0,400,400); fill(255,0,0); rect(0,0,400,400); fill(255,0,0); ...or something dumb, trying to get to the top of the complexity list. It wouldn't be that complicated to scan a project to see how many of each word are being used, certainly less complex than scanning for syntax errors.. actually come to think of it that would be another useful metric, only show us fully functional programs please :D

A long term projects such as of up to half a year long projects need publish button BADLY. Even though many people rather copy and paste to get to hot list, but that's simply waste of database space in KA and too much old stuff spammed throughout

Publish to specific catagories; games, art, instructional, etc.

Programar = Fazer-se entender por máquinas e comandá-las. No caso máquinas binárias.

Programar = Fazer-se entender por máquinas e comandá-las. No caso máquinas binárias.

When I'm working on something, I usually just save it into one of my old programs that I don't care about and then save it as a new program when I'm done with it. But it would be nice if we could set a program to private until we were done with it so that it wouldn't lose any "hotness" for being in development for months.

Yes, I agree. Sometimes I also want to make programs that aren't seen, and sometimes those get on the Hot List. Other times, I want a program to be seen, and it isn't. This would fix that!

I like That idea!!!

fill(0,255,0);
var text = "I Love this idea!";
text(text,200,200);

When I do a major update I end up making a "Version 2.0" to get the new version onto Recent

Here is another idea. To prevent abuse they could make it so it costs something like 10,000 of your energy points to use the publish button. Couple that with my other idea (I think I'm going to post this in a new thread): you earn energy points per vote. If you earned 100 points per vote that would mean you'd need 100 votes to recoup the costs.

Definitely a good idea. there could also be an hide button which would make the program unview-able. You could also publish it in categories. (App, Game, Simulation, Other, etc.)

My problem with this is that some people are ALWAYS on the hot list, and so they get "famous" while everyone else has to work hard to get even one like.

What I do is I don't press save, but every now and then copy and paste my code into a Google Doc or txt file. And then when my code is done, I press save.

Another Reason I feel is that alot of times you don't want other people to preview your work, but you still want to save it.

I once spent four days on a graphic only for it to be completely invisible.

Not to be complaining, but I feel that it should have gotten more votes than it did.

Meanwhile, a program I threw together in less than three hours and put no work except mechanics into shot up to 36 votes and stayed on the hot list for a full week.

Obviously, I'm happy about that, but the word I feel best captures the ratio of time spent vs. quality is misallocated.

I agree with Studious; My highest-voted program ever, although currently hidden, was something that I got 20 votes for, and I threw it together in under 30 minutes using an animation tool :/