I'm sitting here writing a function that I'm positive has been written before, somewhere on earth. It's just too common to have not been attempted, and I'm wondering why I can't just go to a website and search for a function that I can then copy and paste into my project in 2 seconds, instead of wasting my day reinventing the wheel.
Sure there are certain libraries you can use, but where do you find these libraries and when they are absent, is there a site like I'm describing?
Possibly a wiki of some type that contains free code that anybody can edit and improve?
Edit: I can code things fine, I just don't know HOW to do them. So for example, right now, I'm trying to localize a robot/car/point in space. I KNOW there is a way to do it, just based off of range and distance. Triangulation and Trilateration. How to code that is a different story. A site that could have psuedo code, step by step how to do that would be ridiculously helpful. It would also ensure the optimal solution since everybody can edit it. I'm also writing in Matlab, which I hate because it's quirky, adding to my desire for creating a website like I describe.
StackOverflow.com. No, I'm not joking.
At its best, people come here saying "hasn't some library done X already", and very often the Collective Wisdom answers "yes". But the biggest obstacle is lack of a description language: even here, a big problem for many posters is describing the problem clearly enough for others to recognize it as something they've seen before.
And if people can't understand what you're trying to do, no search engine will.
Firstly, two caveats:
Copy and pasting code you don't understand is a bad idea. Make sure you understand exactly what the code does before you use it.
Make sure you respect the license of the code you are copying. This is important!
Those caveats aside, it's often language dependent. Languages with an open development ethos (not just an open source implementation, think Python as compared to Java) tend to have official archives of open source libraries. For example:
Perl (which probably started this trend) has CPAN
Python has PyPI and Python Cookbook
PHP has PEAR
C++ has boost
Ruby has gems
R has CRAN.
Haskell has Hoogle and Hackage
Furthermore, don't forget to look in your languages standard library. Some modern languages have massive standard libraries, which have often contained the functionality I am looking for:
Java has its API documentation
C# and VB.NET have the massive MSDN
Non-openly developed languages often have non-official community archives. For example:
C# tends to have a lot of code at CodePlex and CodeProject
MATLAB has the Matlab Central File Exchange
A third category of sites are language agnostic. They are often best search through POG (plain old-fashioned Google). For example:
Stack Overflow
SourceForge
The confusingly language agnostic Java2s
Planet source code
Github
Finally, a fourth category of sites that I find increasingly useful are source-code search engines:
Google Codesearch
Koders
You may also be able to find useful source code, or at least get help writing something, through various pastebins.
Pastebin is language-agnostic
HPaste is mostly Haskell, but has a little in other languages.
Often, at the end of the day it is easiest just to google it, though.
There is a wiki that contains free code that anybody can edit and improve:
Rosetta Code.
As a means of an overview there is the "Solutions by Programming Task" page.
From the former page:
"Rosetta Code is a programming chrestomathy site. The
idea is to present solutions to the same task in as
many different languages as possible, to demonstrate
how languages are similar and different, and to aid a
person with a grounding in one approach to a problem
in learning another."
Cutting and pasting code you find on the Internet into production code would be like chewing gum found in the street. - Mike Johnson
With that in mind, try sites that host opensource projects like GitHub, CodePlex, code.google.com, etc.
I'm not sure this question is language agnostic, but I use GitHub this way ;) Other languages may have places where this is possible.
Safari Bookshelf from O'Reilly has many, many books that contain many implementations from which to choose.
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/
I was a subscriber for a few years before coming to my current job, where we have a corporate account! It's one of the best perks, and one of the best resources I have available. I haven't bought a computer book in years.
Aside from sites like this (Stack Overflow) I don't think there's many, maybe CodePlex, but I almost marked you -1 for assuming that code found on the Internet is yours to copy.
I'd suggest reading about software licencing, I hope you'd at least comment where you got it from.
I'm looking for a collaborative editor that doesn't suck :) And that at least supports Ruby syntax highlighting. Also, a developer and I will be using this to program, so Google Docs won't work.
In all reality, I just need a collaborative editor that has the concept of a project. Where both users see the folder structure of a project and thus see what the other user has opened and is editing.
Also, it would be ideal that both users have local copies of the data (none of this "You remote into me and don't get to keep the data when we're done" stuff) so that one can actively develop against each other's code.
Truthfully, I've found such an editor: http://www.n-brain.net/una_ide.html#features
But I'd really like to see if there's something else out there that's just killer.
I've tried ECF and Eclipse, and it seems SO promising, but NONE of the Ruby IDE's implement the very simple methods of incorporating ECF document sharing functionality into them.
So, does anyone actively use Collaborative editors? And if so, what's your setup like?
SubEthaEdit is an excellent collaborative editor. It allows multiple users to edit files simultaneously, and chat about it. So far it is the best thing I've found for this sort of thing.
Coda licenses SubEthaEdit and includes the same collaborative functionality. Coda also has a notion of a project including directory structure.
SubEthaEdit is quite the tool. I love it.
You seem to have two different questions there.
For Ruby on Rails, you probably want this one: Aptna RadRails.
For collaborative editor, I haven't tried any collaborative editor myself (other than SubEtha, tho not for actual collaboration). But if you haven't looked yet, here are some options you may wish to try:
Zoho Writer, which is a better Google Docs
Bespin, from Mozilla
beWeeVee Notepad, an off-stream online alternative
I got 'em all from AlternativeTo.net
Aquamacs (Emacs for Mac they call it) is pretty much feature rich
and supports collaborative editing as well. Its hard to beat that in feature list. See this list on wiki to do a comparison yourself. And best of all, its open source! Then there is BBEdit too but doesn't have collaborative editing.
Also see this original question for a comprehensive list.
I've been coding alot of web-stuff all my life, rails lately. And i can always find a website to code, but i'm kind of bored with it. Been taking alot of courses of Java and C lately so i've become a bit interested in desktop application programming.
Problem: I can't for the life of me think of a thing to code for desktop. I just can't think of anything i can code that isn't already out there for download. So what do i do?
I need some project suggestions that i can set as a goal.
I would say you should roam through github or some other open source site and find an existing young or old project that you can contribute to. Maybe there is something that is barely off the ground, or maybe there is a mature project that could use some improvement.
I find to complete a project, it needs to be something I am passionate about. I feel you need to find your own project I'm afraid.
There is always the Netflix Prize though!
I would write a ray tracer.
Oops, sorry... you're looking for an original idea. :) Ray tracers are still cool, though, and easy to get started on. Maybe you'll get an idea for a game while you're working on it.
Visit shoooes.net for a UI toolkit that's easy and fun, and then the-shoebox.org to see the kinds of things people are doing with it.
If you could make a Ruby ANSI (and xbin, and idf, and adf...) Editor, I would love you. Because that means you would have written ANSI parsing routines that I can hope you release to the open source community.
... but that is a selfish answer. Oh, and a cross-platform editor would be nice as well (although TundraDraw somewhat takes care of that).
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I searched for this and found Maudite's question about text editors but they were all for Windows.
As you have no doubt guessed, I am trying to find out if there are any text/code editors for the Mac besides what I know of. I'll edit my post to include editors listed.
Free
Textwrangler
Xcode
Mac Vim
Aquamacs and closer to the original EMacs
JEdit
Editra
Eclipse
NetBeans
Kod
TextMate2 - GPL
Brackets
Atom.io
Commercial
Textmate
BBEdit
SubEthaEdit
Coda
Sublime Text 2
Smultron
WebStorm
Peppermint
Articles related to the subject
Faceoff, which is the best text editor ever?
Maceditors.com, mac editors features compared
Thank you everybody that has added suggestions.
I thought TextMate was everyone's favourite. I haven't met a programmer using a Mac who is not using TextMate.
I haven't used it myself, but another free one that I've heard good thing about is Smultron.
In my own research on this, I found this interesting article:
Faceoff: Which Is The Best Mac Text Editor Ever?
Emacs
Vim
But I use TextMate, and can say that it is, without a doubt, worth every penny I paid for it.
Sublime text is awesome (http://www.sublimetext.com/2). Excellent search features, very fast and lightweight. Very decent code completion.
I also use RubyMine and WebStorm a lot (http://www.jetbrains.com/). They are excellent but not all purpose like TextMate.
MacVim and SubEthaEdit are two nice options
I've tried Komodo out a bit, and I really like it so far. Aptana, an Eclipse variant, is also rather useful for a wide variety of things. There's always good ole' VI, too!
If you ever plan on making a serious effort at learning Emacs, immediately forget about Aquamacs. It tries to twist and bend Emacs into something it's not (a super-native OS X app). That might sound well and all, but once you realize that it completely breaks nearly every standard keybinding and behavior of Emacs, you begin to wonder why you aren't just using TextEdit or TextMate.
Carbon Emacs is a good Emacs application for OS X. It is as close as you'll get to GNU Emacs without compiling for yourself. It fits in well enough with the operating system, but at the same time, is the wonderful Emacs we all know and love. Currently it requires Leopard with the latest release, but most people have upgraded by now anyway. You can fetch it here.
Alternatively, if you want to use Vim on OS X, I've heard good things about MacVim.
Beyond those, there are the obvious TextEdit, TextMate, etc line of editors. They work for some people, but most "advanced" users I know (myself included) hate touching them with anything shorter than a 15ft pole.
CotEditor is a Cocoa-based open source text editor. It is popular in Japan.
Best open source one is Smultron in my opinion, but it doesn't a torch to TextMate.
There's a new kid on the block - PHPStorm. I used it for a whole year. Its not free but offers an individual license of 49$ for a year, free for Open Source Developers.
Speedy for an IDE - Its based on Java so looks somewhat like Eclipse/Netbeans but smokes them to dust in terms of speed (not as fast as Coda/Textmate as this is an IDE).
Keyboard shortcuts galore - I seldom touched the mouse while developing using PHPStorm (that's what I didn't like about Coda)
Subversion support built-in - Didn't need to touch Versions or any other SVN client on Mac
Supports snippets, templates - zen-coding is supported as well
Supports projects, though in separate windows
File search, code search
code completion, supports PHPDoc code completion too
BBEdit makes all other editors look like Notepad.
It handles gigantic files with ease; most text editors (TextMate especially) slow down to a dead crawl or just crash when presented with a large file.
The regexp and multiple-file Find dialogs beat anything else for usability.
The clippings system works like magic, and has selection, indentation, placeholder, and insertion point tags, it's not just dumb text.
BBEdit is heavily AppleScriptable. Everything can be scripted.
In 9.0, BBEdit has code completion, projects, and a ton of other improvements.
I primarily use it for HTML, CSS, JS, and Python, where it's extremely strong. Some more obscure languages are not as well-supported in it, but for most purposes it's fantastic.
The only devs I know who like TextMate are Ruby fans. I really do not get the appeal, it's marginally better than TextWrangler (BBEdit's free little brother), but if you're spending money, you may as well buy the better tool for a few dollars more.
jEdit does have the virtue of being cross-platform. It's not nearly as good as BBEdit, but it's a competent programmer's editor. If you're ever faced with a Windows or Linux system, it's handy to have one tool you know that works.
Vim is fine if you have to work over ssh and the remote system or your computer can't do X11. I used to love Vim for the ease of editing large files and doing repeated commands. But these days, it's a no-vote for me, with the annoyance of the non-standard search & replace (using (foo) groups instead of (foo), etc.), painfully bad multi-document handling, lack of a project/disk browser view, lack of AppleScript, and bizarre mouse handling in the GVim version.
jEdit runs on OS X, being Java-based. It's somewhat similar to TextMate, I think.
Editra looks interesting, but I've not tried it myself.
TextMate not for "advanced programmers". That does not make sense, TextMate contains everything an "advanced programmer" would want. It allows them to define a bundle that allows them to quickly set up the way they want their source code formatted, or one that follows the project guidelines, quick easy access to create entire structures and classes based on typing part of a construct and hitting tab.
TextMate is my tool of choice, it is fast, lightweight and yet contains all of the features I would want in a tool to program with. While it is not tightly integrated in Xcode, that is not a problem for me as I don't write software for Mac OS X. I write software for FreeBSD.
Definitely BBEdit. I code, and BBEdit is what I use to code.
You might consider one of the classics - they're both free, extensible and have large user bases that extend beyond the Mac:
Aquamacs - emacs for OS X (emacs in a shell window is also an option)
Mac Vim - VI with a Mac-specific GUI (vim in a shell window is also an option)
I prefer an old-school editing setup. I use command-line vim embedded in a GNU Screen "window" inside of iTerm.
This may not integrate well with XCode, but I think it works great for developing and using command-line programs. If you spend any significant time working in a terminal, GNU Screen is worth the 30 minutes it takes to master the basic terminal multiplexing concepts.
Coda's great for PHP/ASP/HTML style development. Great interface, multiple-file search and replace with regexp support, slick FTP/SFTP/etc integration for browsing and editing remote files, SVN integration, etc.
It now supports plugins and the plugin editor can import TextMate bundles, so there's a bright future there. There aren't a lot of must-have plugins yet because the plugin support was newly introduced with version 1.6 a few months back. It's a popular app, though, so I expect more in the future.
The "killer features" for me are:
* Seamless editing of remote files
* Code navigator (symbol browser; pane that lists functions etc)
Most people aren't really into using symbol browsers but as I have to maintain a lot of unfamiliar code I find them invaluable.
I'm not sure that Coda has the "raw power" of TextMate though. I plan on getting familiar with TextMate next.
I make use of Komodo IDE. It supports a huge number of languages, and is customisable but is a bit expensive (my company bought me a copy). A really good alternative is the free version called Komodo Edit. Loads really quickly and has a decent feature list and I find myself turning to it rather than the full IDE for a lot of jobs.
Smultron is another good (and free) one.
I actually prefer EditRocket over TextMate. I use it on both my Mac and Ubuntu machines. It is nice to use the same editor on multiple operating systems.
Textmate is state of the Art editor, but if someone is thinking about developing on several platforms without awkward memory eaters monsters like jedit, eclipse, netbeans etc take a look at geany (geany.org). It is free. The only problem the editor has not esthetic look and feel on Mac OS X :)
Fraise is a nice free option. It has some rough edges, but you can't beat the price. I believe it's a fork or successor of Smultron.
SubEthaEdit
Coda
DashCode with OS X 10.8 or older
Eclipse and its variants.
Netbeans
I use Eclipse as my primary editor (for Python) but I always keep SubEthaEdit handy as my supplemental text editor (free trial, 30 euros to license). It's not super-complicated but it does what I need.
Another vote for Smultron. I used it when doing some XQuery programming and being able to define a keyword files for syntax color highlighting was great.
I have installed both Smultron and Textwrangler, but find myself using Smultron most of the time.
I would love to use a different editor than XCode for coding, but I feel, that no other editor integrates tightly enough with it to be really worthwhile.
However, given some time, TextMate might eventually get to that point. At the moment though, it primarily lacks debugging features and refactoring.
For everything that does not need XCode, I love TextMate. If I had another Mac-user in my workgroup I would probably consider SubEthaEdit for its collaboration features. If it is Emacs you want, I would recommend Aquamacs (more Mac-like) or Carbon Emacs (more GNU-Emacs-like)
I've been using BBEdit for years. It's rock-solid, fast, and integrates into my Xcode workflow decently well. (I'm not sure anything integrates into Xcode as well as the built-in editor, but who has time to wait for the built-in editor?)
For small team projects which don't use a source control system, or for single user editing on multiple machines, SubEthaEdit comes highly recommended.
Eclipse and Netbeans have text editors among a whole lot of other stuff. I don't think you would want to wait 10 seconds for your text editor to become ready :/...If you are going to spend some serious time coding then spend some time and learn to use vim (emacs too but, I recommend vim)