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How Do You Store Your Previously-Written Code?
Asmor asks: "I'm a novice programmer who is largely self-taught. It's never been too much trouble for me to reinvent the wheel constantly before, but now as my ambitions get loftier I'm finding that I could really benefit from maintaining some oft-used code that can easily be reused. The problem is, I really don't have any experience with this and I'm not really sure how I should organize things, how the code should be stored, how it should be implemented, etc. I think this is what people mean when they talk about libraries and/or APIs, but not really sure. I'm specifically curious about PHP and JavaScript, but advice for other programming languages is also helpful! How do you store and maintain your most frequently used code?"
Use CVS or some other revisioning system.
It's never been too much trouble for me to reinvent the wheel constantly before, but now as my ambitions get loftier I'm finding that I could really benefit from maintaining some oft-used code that can easily be reused.
Inventing something once is Genius. Inventing something twice is stupidity.
Using OOP, code should be reusable without having to have some external database. I find that the more external processes one has, the less likely one is to use it.
Code should be self-documenting. I'm not saying you don't have external documnenation... just that well written code has good comments. A good practice is to comment function and classes before coding.
Break things down into components. Refactor. Then your code will be very reusable.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Store you code on a disk or a tape. If you store it on a printout, you'll just have to type it in again.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I run a small web dev firm that does a lot in the way of PHP and JS, like yourself. What we have found works the best for our core library is a copy of Subversion running on our server. This way we all know exactly what the latest version is, and more importantly we can see how it became the latest version (i.e. what changes were made). A lot of tools run with SVN nicely. For instance, Trac talks to a backend copy of SVN and couples it loosely with a wiki and a couple of other things. A lot of hosting providers will also run a copy of SVN for you, like http://networkredux.com/ (We just switched over to them).
Of course, a root level folder on the ftp server can also work.
He's new and self-taught. Cut him some slack. I started becoming self-taught on a TRS-80 Model I. The code I wrote was a joke. I picked up lingo along the way. After getting away from computers, I re-entered the computer programming field, only to be faced with a new paradigm -- OOP, n-tier apps, etc. It took a lof of reading, wading through different opinions on design, idiots who have written a lot on the subject and don't know what they are talking about, etc. It was a lot to absorb, but after a few years of trial by fire, think I am on top of these things.
He is at the beginning of the curve. Laughing at him won't help.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I just use 7zip to archive my nighly builds, and email them to myself on my gmail account. I put the comments on the code in the message body. Gmail gives you over 2.5 gigs of storage space, and you can search you message bodies and headers. I can also retrieve my code and projects from anywhere in the world, and don't have to worry about hard drive crashes.
Havoc Video
I usually print it out and staple it to a squirrel. Then I set the squirrel free, because information wants to be free, and so do squirrels with paper stapled to them.
I think this is what people mean when they talk about libraries and/or APIs, but not really sure.
Not quite. What you are talking about sounds like just a repository of random code. A library is a specifically designed set of code to perform a given task or set of tasks. There's a certain amount of order implied in the term just as is implied by that big building where they put books.
API's are designed interfaces to a system to make coding easier to do. You don't have to understand how the underlying guts of the code works, you just program to work with interfaces. So you call the draw() method and a line appears on the screen but you don't need to know how to speak directly to the video card, etc.
AS for the original question, I have two suggestions. The first is to use CVS as a way to version your code. It's like have CTRL+Z for your entire project. It makes it much easier when you are adding new code because you can feel comfortable breaking it completely because you know you can revert it easily.
The second is to use a simple search engine to catalog your code. Google desktop would be up to the task. Just check out your code from CVS and put it in a directory somewhere. Then when you need code for some task you can search for it. If you're good about commenting your code, that should work like a charm.
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to retrieve that information
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd say asking the slashdot readership IS doing research. If you've got time to flame him for asking a question clearly you weren't too busy to respond to his question.
The smartest way to get knowledge is to ask the people that know. And by posting on Slashdot it's not like he's barging down your door or sauntering into your cubicle and demanding your attention. It's a very passive non-intrusive inquiry. You read the post, you responded, you have no reason left to complain about this.
Plus, as a largely self-taught programmer myself I know that asking a question from someone who knows can sometimes get an answer 10 times faster (and 10 times more clearly) than reading a bunch of manuals frequently written either for dummies or for experts. That in-between period when you don't need someone explaining how an if-statement works but you don't really quite know the next step is a difficult phase. In my opinion this isn't a question of laziness - it's a question of efficiency. There seem to be plenty of people here who want to help him. Why don't you kindly get out of their way?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I can't believe his age is even being discussed. He could be 33 for all I care. since when is it a crime to ask a question? Again - he's not wasting anybody's time. Anyone who resonds to this thread to complain about him proves they have the time to deal with the issue at least a little bit.
I think it's crazy that some poor guy manages to get his question posted on slashdot - which means he's probably going to get a wealth of information - and he ends up having the legitimacy of his question debated in terms of his age!
It's people like this that give techies such a bad reputation. It's one thing to laugh in fun at the dumb users who try to use the CD-drives as cup holders. It's another thing to get irritated with users who expect us to fix their messes after the screw stuff up. But to smack down someone who's actually trying to learn to do it on their own because you don't like their question? That's just elitist and anti-social.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
It may be all you *need* to get started, but I'm sure you know that PHP's OO these days is quite stellar. PHP 5 classes are now complete, with the whole OO shebang: polymorphism, encapsulation, interfaces, C++-like exception handling... the only thing that it doesn't support, and I'm not sure it *is* strictly necessary, is multiple inheritance. For the rest, you should try PHP 5, it is a very mature language and, IMHO, quite suitable for general purpose programming, not only web pages, even more so with the recent release of PHP-QT (there is already a PHP-GTK if that's your poison) for stand-alone GUI applications.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Now, there's a few caveats here. Another thing that happens over time is you learn to stop re-inventing the wheel and to use pre-existing libraries. Right now, you're just unaware of their existence, but you'll learn where to look if you make a little effort. In fact, you'll find that existing libraries tends to heavily influence choice of language to use. So it turns out that most things that are really worth reusing are already available, and you should use those solutions rather than maintaining your own. Sure, write your own for fun or education, but when you get a serious project, you've got no use for it. In some cases, you'll find that there's no library available, so you write something from scratch, but 3 years later, you find that somebody else has made a nice library that's much better than what you hacked together. Several times I have ported code from my own hacked together solution to a more mature library. It's a natural progression, and there are a thousand times more libraries freely available today versus 10 years ago.
Now, having said all that, there are still times where you want to make something that is generically reusable. The point is, though, you should really make an effort to make a library out of your code. I have done just this on a handful of occasions. Then, put it up on SourceForge or something similar dedicated to your language of choice. I have a few libraries up on SourceForge, some only a few hundred lines of code, but some other people have found them useful because I made the effort. Other people have suggested CVS or whatnot, and SourceForge will give you that.
Maybe the real gist of your question, though, was about making your code into a library? While the technical details of making a lib, dll, so, jar, pm, etc vary from language to language (sometimes compiler to compiler), here's a few pointers: