As you progresses and learn, you'll find that there are lot of useful and interesting code snippets that you may like and wanted to store for future uses. What can you do? You immediately fired up notepad, copy and paste all the snippets into it. Well, you may have your snippets stored, but as times goes by, your code library gradually expands and it'll get tough and messy to search for a snippet you require.
You have to spend plenty of time look for that snippet through your notepad and word file, not mentioning the lack of syntax highlighting on notepad make the code snippets even harder to read as well.
This is simply poor information management problem that you can avoid. There's this saying "when there's a will, there's a way." Any problem bound to have a solution to it. So how can we solve this problem? Yes! What we'll need is Code Snippet Tools. But before we touch on the tools, we need to understand why we should store our code snippets in the first place.
Benefits Of Storing Code Snippets?
Save Time On Typing
It'll save you time from typing the same pieces of code again. Cut down on typos that you will spend time trying to fix.
Reduce Time For Debug
Of course we will only keep code snippets that worked from your previous project or snippets that you have used before, so it should not have any bug at least.
Decrease Search Time
Have you found yourself "googling" for solutions to the same problem over and over again. More troubling were the times that instead of trying to enter keywords that seemed relevant to the issue, you have to try recalling and guessing the keywords that you used to find the snippets to the issue.
No More Losing Of Code Snippet
Have you try digging through your RSS feeds or looking back your browser history to locate a site or post that has the code snippet that will solve your problem?
Some of the snippet tools allow you to insert comment, you can actually save the URL of the site that the snippet locate in your snippet tools. When you search your snippet library, you can refer to the site again with the URL that you have saved.
Consistent Compliant Format
If you have a team of programmers, with the right snippet tools, everyone in the team can share and use the same library of snippets and the markup of the pages created will be consistent.
Code Snippets Storing Good Practices
What To Store And What Not To Store?
It's snippet, so don't try storing tons of classes. Snippets should be something that you think that will help you speed up your daily work or small function that you think is useful to note down.
Comment Your Snippets
Don't just store plain code, give some comment description that explains what the snippet do and how to use it. It's also a good practice, because as the amount of snippet increases, you might not be able to recall certain snippet's function.
Code Editors With Snippet Support
Many developer has different ways of storing their codes and there are many different type of snippet tools. Most of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) itself has the ability to help you store your code snippets within your code editor. By entering some shorthand command, the snippet will be populated.
Coda
Coda bring together FTP that allow you to edit code on your remote server live. If you need to SSH into a server and run some mySQL queries, or restart Apache, or debug PHP, you need a terminal, there's one for you.
Textmate
TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Dreamweaver CS4 let you design, develop, and maintain standards-based websites and applications. With new features let you preview and test web content twice as fast.
Komodo IDE
Komodo IDE's award-winning feature set includes standard editor functionality, syntax checking and coloring, a regex debugging tool and more. Team development is also faster with source code control integration.
Zendstudio
Zend Studio is the next generation of our professional-grade PHP application development environment. It has been designed to maximize developer productivity by enabling you to develop and maintain code faster, solve application problems quickly and improve team collaboration.
Aptana
Aptana is the leader in web application development, deployment and management solutions. RadRails is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools with tight integration with Aptana Cloud services.
phpDesigner
phpDesigner is more than just a powerful and lightning fast PHP IDE and PHP editor, it is also a full-featured HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor and even more! -- for both beginners and professional developers!
External Code Snippet Tools To Store Your Code
However, some people prefer using external tools to store the snippets. Some external snippet tools help you organize your snippets in another way, which you can add comments, tags or categorize them the way you want. Which ever the tools is, the main idea here is to use something that you need and be comfortable with, which will eventually boost your works efficiently.
Snippely
Snippely is a basic text and code organizational tool build on Adobe Air. Instead of storing bits of code, quick notes, and memos in text files all over your hard drive, this application will let you save and organize "snippets" in one convenient location. Snippets are stored in groups for organization and quick retrieval.
OS: Windows, Mac and Linux
License: Free
Snippet App
Easily create Snippets from selected text anywhere on your mac, and it can be Sync Snippet with MobileMe so you always have your snippets. The snippet app will have an icon located at the menu bar of your mac, creating new snippets only takes seconds and searching your snippets instantly with a few keystrokes
OS: Mac only
License: $12.95
jCodeCollector
jCodeCollector has syntax highlighting, tags and allow you to add in your comment for each snippet of code. When you need some certain code, you can use the search box locate at the bottom right, or nail it down through category. Once you find what you need, you can copy and paste the code into your editor.
OS: Window, Mac and Linux
License: Free
Typinator
Typinator is an automatic text software that boosts your productivity and eliminates errors by automating the process of inserting frequently used text and graphics and auto-correcting typing errors. It can helps you insert any block of snippets, phrases or pictures into any type of document.
OS: Mac only
License: $19.99
Code Collector Pro
Code Collector Pro is a new way of accessing your snippets from outside of Code Collector. Bring it up with a global hot key and search for the snippet you want. Sharing snippets can be messy and a pain. With this it gets rid of the hassle behind sharing and helps you get your useful code out to others easily.
OS: Mac only
License: $20.00
Snap-It Pro
Snip-it Pro allows drag and drop and new templating features allows you to add placeholders that can be replaced before use. Assign hot keys to snippets and save even more time. You can also put your snippet library on a network share and everyone on your team can use the same snippets.
OS: Window only
License: $39.95
Textexpander
TextExpander saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images. It also added common typos as triggers‚ TextExpander automatically replaces them with the correct spelling! TextExpander also includes the TidBITs AutoCorrect Dictionary.
OS: Mac only
License: $29.95
Texter
Unlike software-specific text replacement features, Texter runs in the Windows system tray and works in any application you're typing in. Texter can also set return-to markers for your cursor and insert clipboard contents into your replacement text, in addition to more advanced keyboard macros.
OS: Window only
License: Free
Snippets
Snippets is an application for Mac OS X that stores the most important pieces of your code you can re-use in different projects. The main idea here is to make the process of re-using as much easier as possible and avoid wasting your valuable time to write the same code once again.
OS: Mac only
License: Free till 1.0 version
Conclusion
Snippet tools can help you store your code snippets in one place saving you trouble and cut down searching time, you do not have to go through many search engine results or websites to find something to the same problem you need again. In other words, it's an code bank that consolidate all your savings, why not give your memory a break and start using some of these tools?
