Original Post
There are a million things in my idea basket, and I wanted to pull this one out to see what you guys think. Most of us are programmers, and most of us use google to find code to do what we need to do, as well as API references (I know I personally don't troll the MSDN using its native search, or by navigating their mind-blowingly huge navigator tree). What I propose is this: A site that when you visit, its set up fairly similar to google. You have a box where you can search what you are looking for, and click "Go". Of course, google does this, and does it well, so what would be so different about this site? Well here are my ideas: 1) I may use spiders, but for the most part, the content is entered by people, and 100% of the content is moderated for accuracy and formatting/style. Every entry is structured in a very specific way. It will have a title, keywords, description, and code. The description can contain code as well, but the idea here is to give the person what they want -- something they can copy/paste, most of us can figure out how the code works anyway. I hate having to copy chunks of code between long descriptions. Maby a "Place code in clipboard" button? The code will be auto-structured, and syntax highlighted via a script, to ensure that every single entry looks good. If I do have a spider, none of the content will be forced onto the site -- I want to ensure that every entry is accurate, bug free, and does what it says it does. 2) The site will be built with the idea that you are searching for what you want to do. For example "javascript popup window" or "C# download file", and the like. Although most searches will use a heuristic scanning system, an administrator can take a look at the most popular searches, and may link those searches to "recommended" results. These results will be displayed above the standard ones. Users cannot rate the accuracy of the searches. It will determine accuracy by what the user does. For example, if they click on the first entry, click back, and then click on the next entry, the system will know the user most likely didn't want the first one. Of course, this is just a very brief idea of that system, it'd be quite complicated internally. 3) I personally find myself searching for certain snippets over and over on a regular basis (for example, a blank XHTML webpage layout, or a function to load HTML from a string into a TWebBrowser). The site would allow you to have a "quicklink" style bar where you can organize and quickly jump to your bookmarked snippits. 4) This is optional and really just icing on the cake, but of course things like forums and possibly tutorials can be added at some point. But the main idea is that you use the site to find functions that do what you need to do in as quick of a manner as possible. Is this a good idea? Would it be useful? Has it been already done?
