Finding New Code

tabandmountaindew writes "Too much time is wasted re-implementing code that someone else has already done, for the sole reason it's faster than finding the other code. Previous source code search engines, such as google codesearch and krugle, only considered individual files on their own, leading to poor quality results, making them only useful when the amount of time to re-implement was extremely high. According to a recent newsforge article a fledgling source-code search engine All The Code is aiming to change all of this. By looking at code, not just on its own, but also how it is used, it is able to return more relevant results. This seems like just what we need to unify the open-source community, leading to an actual common repository of unique code, and ending the cycle of unnecessary reimplementing."

Comments

I call bullshit on this

[analog_line]

I'm not a coder, but my impression of the vast majority of coders is that they reinvent the wheel because they believe that everyone screwed up their wheel implementation and if no one is going to do it right, they should.

Re:I call bullshit on this

[introp]

There's an old adage in the racing business: if you're building a parade float, buy your wheels. If you're racing a 300 kph Formula One car, consider building your own. If you place very high demands on a component because it is at the core of what you do, the stock component may not be good enough.

So, in software, if the "wheel" is at the core if your product, you may have to re-invent it to get exactly what you need. This is not because everyone else screwed it up, just that the stock "wheel" serves 90% of the features for cheap. Look at the Mac iPhone's OS, Cisco's move to (cheaper, memory-wise) VxWorks on the WRT54, etc.

Re:I call bullshit on this

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I think a system like this might work if it has a user feedback system, where particular authors get a good reputation by positive feedback. So you know that an implementation is probably good if that author has good ratings. Think about system libraries. Nobody (well, mostly nobody) writes their own implementation of system libs, because they trust (usually) the implementation provided by the OS or the compiler. Why do they trust? Why is a Microsoft routine more trustworthy than S00p3rC0d3r's? Just because those functions have been tested by users over and over again. And they're (usually) well-documented.

Re:I call bullshit on this

[NotQuiteReal]

I often Push on the Pull doors, just to see if they work.

Often the Push/Pull sign is just some control freak placing arbitrary rules on things. So what if you clock a little old lady on the other side once in a while.

Freedom to swing both ways has its price!

Re:I call bullshit on this

[Lazerf4rt]

I don't think people are giving programmers enough credit for having common sense, and this project to reduce code re-implementation sounds pretty idealistic. I don't know if I call bullshit on it, but I smell a few flawed assumptions.

First flawed assumption seems to be that the hard part in re-using code is simply to find it. But that's crap. When code is in the form where it can even be re-used, it's called a module, and a big chunk of this code is the module's interface. The interface is what lets you re-use it. But there are huge differences between interfaces. There are different calling conventions, different parameter orderings, different limitations on thread re-entry, different permissions on order of things you're allowed to call, and entirely different approaches to specifying the interface. A streaming library can have a public function Read() or it can have a pair of public functions BeginRead()/EndRead(), and there are many valid reasons for both cases.

Point being, you often have to refactor a module's interface before you can fit it into your project, and depending on the size and purpose of that module, the refactoring might be just as slow as writing a new implementation.

Second flawed assumption is that developers aren't even able to find the code which they need to find today. But that's crap too because there are a lot of great, re-useable libraries that programmers already commonly know about, or can easily find through Google or Sourceforge. First of all, the standard C/C++ libraries give you a lot. Then there's zlib, curl, glut, Allegro, and hundreds (thousands, depending on your standards) more, depending on what you're doing.

Come to think of it, when you really want to re-use code, you look for libraries, not source code. Searching for source code mainly helps people who want to learn programming.

I know that the site linked in the summary only contains Java code right now, and I'm mainly focusing on C/C++ here but I think a lot of what I said applies. (Don't tell me that Java's automatic turning of each class into a monitor solves the thread re-entry problem, because that really just substitutes one problem for another.)

Re:I call bullshit on this

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

There was a Joel On Software post a while back that explained this.

Most applicable quote:

If it's a core business function -- do it yourself, no matter what.

Three things that make this article suspicious

[knightmad]

1) "Java Only for now, more coming soon!"
2) "Alpha"
3) The linked article is a "product announcement" on Newsforge

This is slashvertisement for a vaporware product. Although this is promising, there is nothing concrete there to call it "what we need to unify the open-source community", not even an alternative to Google codesearch.

Btw, is alpha the new beta?

Are we really making it better for us, or worse?

[hacker]

If we create this grand, uber code-searching portal, which can search the context of the code, aren't we making it easier for commercial entities to go ahead and and pick and choose those bits of code to use in their products, knowing full well that they're going to violate the GPL (or other OSS licensing models) by doing so?

I've talked to NO LESS THAN a dozen commercial companies in the last 2-3 years where they're actively taking FOSS source and incorporating it into their products, because.. (and I quote) "..Its freeware, so we can use it however we wish."

The licensing differences between "freeware" and "free software" seem to escape them. Just google around and you'll see thousands of FOSS projects listed on sites like TUCOWS, download.com and others, as "freeware" and not the proper "free software" that they are. There are also people who think "free software" means just that (lowercase "F" there).

Let's be sure that if we have a search engine that let's brainless developers look like experts by cutting and pasting bits of OSS code from here and there together to make their software work, that they know what the license is and that they must be in compliance with it to use it.

Please?

Dependency Rejection

[aprilsound]

I'm of the opinion that most frameworks and libraries don't reimplement enough. In the FOSS Java world, everyone has a dependency on some version of Apache Commons Lang. For what? Just so we don't have to write StringUtils.isEmpty?

Don't get me wrong, if you're developing a stand alone project that wont be a dependency for someone else, then you absolutely want to rewrite as little code as possible. Let someone else maintain as much of your codebase as possible. But if you are writing something that other projects will be using as a dependency, don't you dare make me download four other libraries just to run your code. Write your own dang StringUtils or, if you're lazy and your project is GPLed, just copy the code.

Doesn't work

[Timesprout]

I just ran a search for "the 500,000 lines of code I need to finish by friday all the stupid extra features the PHB wanted after we had set a deadline based on the original spec".

0 results, rather disappointingly.

Re:Are we really making it better for us, or worse

[gravesb]

We shouldn't ignore a good idea just because it makes it easier for someone to do something illegal. There are laws to protect the code. I think the benefits will outweigh any loss from commercial companies stealing the code. I hope this does work out as well as it looks like it could.

Licensing

[maxwell demon]

I think in order to be really useful for not reinventing the wheel, it should allow intelligent searching for licensing. That is, it should allow to restrict your search to codes with certain licenses, or even better, to code under a license compatible with any given license (or set of licenses).

For example, if you are working on code which you want to release as BSD, it's not much help if you find code licensed under the GPL, even if that code on its own is great. Likely, if you are writing GPLed code, you are not interested in code under licenses incompatible with the GPL (like e.g. the MPL).

Of course, the search engine cannot make a guarantee that the license will fit your needs, but then, it cannot guarantee that about the code's functionality either.

Well....

[VE3OGG]

While the article mentions that too much time is spent re-implementing new code, I disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing (tm). Re-inventing the wheel can often cause evolution of code, as opposed to the stagnation that can occur if something remains static. Now, of course people will say that this is GPL code, and people can then modify it -- this is of course true, but modification on that level seldom equates to evolution per se, sometimes because the changes as specific to the application, sometimes because you are trying to do something with code that simply wasn't designed for (I guess you could equate it to trying to run a a web server from Windows 95).

Re:Laziness?

[tb()ne]

So what if a particular solution has been implemented before? Continuously writing code should keep people on their feet, and ready for when they have to respond to a unique situation, right?

Except that most people have jobs with deadlines. Besides, there's always more code to write. Even if I pull available code out of a repository, I'll still be continuously writing code. Furthermore, there's value in seeing how other people implement a solution because it is probably not exactly the way you would have implemented it and you just might learn something from their solution.

Why I rewrite code...

[pbhogan]

While I certainly would welcome anything that could help me find code, the reason I'd want it is to find reference code, not reusable code. I've been programming for, oh, two decades now and one thing I find myself doing constantly is finding a bunch of libraries or bits of code and coming to the conclusion that I should just write it myself because of one of the following:

1. The library/code is good, but doesn't quite work the way I want it to
2. The library/code is close, but getting it to work the way I want is painful
3. The library/code is bad
4. The documentation is bad/nonexistent
5. The license is prohibitive or annoying (i.e. it's not LGPL or BSD or the like)
6. I enjoy writing code and sometimes I feel I could do it more elegantly, or efficiently (I might just want a very specific and optimized part of it)

More often than than not though I just enjoy coding and I love learning to code by writing new code. The black box thing... eh... I like to tinker under the hood and find out how things work.

But my point is that finding code is not that hard. It's finding code that fits *exactly* what we want. Code is usually just not quite as modular as we'd like to believe and, if we're honest, as programmers we have a certain vanity about writing code so it does things My Way. :)