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A few years ago as an undergraduate student I wrote a short bit of code (~200-300 lines) to implement a variant of a well-known algorithm for solving a particularly challenging mathematical optimization problem. Somewhat new to writing software at this level, I posted my code anonymously to the Code Review StackExchange site to seek feedback on its clarity and quality.

Earlier today, I found myself searching GitHub for an open-source solution to a similar mathematical optimization problem when I encountered a repository containing software used by a prominent research group which makes use of a slight modification of the aforementioned code. The repository very graciously makes mention of my Code Review StackExchange post, but does not, of course, mention me by name.

I have recently graduated, and am currently struggling a bit to make any headway in the job market. In an effort to make my resume more appealing, and since I'm applying primarily to scientific software development positions and similar, I'm attempting to carefully document my (up to this point very poorly documented) contributions to scientific software. Since very few of my contributions have been to open-source (or otherwise well-documented) software, I'm considering mentioning this code. My questions are:

Would it be appropriate to reach out and ask to be acknowledged by name? I'm concerned that this might be perceived an unusual request, or perhaps even be taken as rude. Or would it perhaps be better to simply identify myself in e.g. my resume as the anonymous account holder?

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Posts on Stack Exchange, including Code Review, are licensed under CC-BY-SA. The "BY" part means that redistribution of post content requires attribution of the author.
At the very least, people using your posted code are required to attribute it to the name/pseudonym under which the post was published. Now, oftentimes people default to just including a link to the post so asking them1 to amend it with your name is perfectly fine.

However, the real question is whether you can proof you are the author in the first place. If you can, whether this proof is enshrined in the GitHub project or just your resume is secondary.
The account used here only has a single CR question that does not match the description of the code (shorter and very recent). Very likely you are missing the digital paper-trail to actually claim the initial code as yours, let alone claim acknowledgement for any derived code.

So tread carefully. You have a moral claim to be acknowledged, but you must find a practical approach to get it implemented. By all means do approach the authors of the project for acknowledgement, but be humble and don't be pushy.

1It's a good idea to start by literally just asking them, politely. Licenses are not everyone's friend, so throwing the license-book at people should be avoided unless needed.

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  • The company keeps detailed records of everything that happens on the network (no surprise). It probably wouldn't be too much trouble to merge the original with their current account. See I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them? Just be sure to include your justification for the request in your support message and as much detail as possible to validate that the accounts in question are both yours.
    – Ian
    Commented Jul 29 at 15:16
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Would it be appropriate to reach out and ask to be acknowledged by name?

Yes, this is acceptable. You wrote the code, therefore it is reasonable to be acknowledged by name. Nothing bad can reasonably come out of such a request.

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    But which name - user names on SE are often pseudonyms and tying a pseudonym to one's real name years later raises difficulties. Are they really who they said they are?
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Jul 29 at 14:06

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