Monday, June 29, 2009

Putting software "Softlets" online

I'm sure most programmers (either professionals or hobbyists) have this problem. I write tons of "one off" programs that eventually just get lost. These range from attempts-at-products down to one-liner scripts with everything in between. A favorite example is a very small java program that downloads streaming music into individual MP3 files. (shhh Don't tell the suits that "streaming audio" is just a text file of MP3 URL's ) Sometimes I use these programs, or I'll call them "Softlets" and sometimes I abandon them. I suspect they might have value to others even if they are not complete. When I have a coding problem the first thing I do is google the net and I get a lot of value from very simple snips of code. But how can I contribute to this Shared Mind of information ? Unless I'm going to publish a full blown product (such as xmlsh) I dont bother putting it on the net. Its too much pain. I would have to actually *document* it then make it into a buildable format (often I just run from a GUI). And let alone actually name the thing, find a web page for it, write the descriptions etc. That might take longer then it took me to write the Softlet in the first place, and the reason I write these things is I dont want to bother writing a full-blown program in the first place (or they become part of one later).

So what to do ? I'd love to point a Mini-Google at my hard drive and say "go get em", (excluding of course those directories where I do work for my employeers).

It would be nice to post these things in a wiki or blogish format, self archived and indexed with documentation AI'd out of the code. Ok maybe just a directory structure.

Any thoughts on this ? Are there any such tools to easily publish "My Codelets" web site?

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