A new vertical search engine plans to launch this Monday, with a twist. Koders.com has the goal of helping programmers find open source code they need to do their job. From the site’s “about” page:
A significant portion of application development involves a process of find, copy, paste, and integrate. This process can be greatly accelerated when you can find existing source code that provides a solution to the task at hand.
Koders makes it easy for software developers to find existing source code that solves many common development problems with our vast index of working source code from a variety of open source projects. In many cases you may find code that solves the exact problem you are working on, and in other cases, you can find an 80% solution – where existing code can be suited to your needs with minor modifications.
This is a cool idea, though I have to admit I have no idea if it is an unsolved problem. Plenty of programmers/coders read this site, so let me know if this is the kind of service you might need or want. I do know that as someone who is about to embark on building an open source-based platform, this could certainly prove a valuable resource.
More details from a release I was just sent:
The company currently indexes over 190 million lines of code from more than 28 thousand projects in hundreds of open source repositories that users can search by keyword, language, and license or perform advanced queries using enhanced syntax. Search results are then displayed in a developer-friendly format that makes it easy to understand the code in its original working context.
Koders.com also features a unique Project Cost Calculator that presents a side-by-side analysis of leveraging existing code versus developing it from scratch. Not only does this enable easy assessment of build-versus-buy alternatives, it also provides developers with a quantifiable perspective of their contributions to the open source community.
I remember seeing this a while ago. It doesn’t seem nearly as useful as something like search.cpan.org which is specifically focused on libraries and modules you can use. Also if you’re looking at code snipits, use design patterns instead random code.
The other issue is that most open source is covered by GPL (or GPL-like) and the resulting code would have to be made available to anyone. That would limit commerical applications from being developed.
I find it can be a useful resource.
It would be good to add a decent graph visualization (think social network) of the projects so you can see project dependencies and therefore individual projects’ popularity.
Maybe they should register that “CodeRank” trademark…
Koders has existed for a while now, and I have found it to be a useful reference on a couple of occasions. I think the success will be based on how good a search return they can give to queries. Or maybe google will buy them in a bit…
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Please check out our newly released source code search engine here,
http://www.codase.com
e.g., search socket method call,
http://www.codase.com/search/call?name=socket&owner=&lang=*&type=&par…
Rather than treating code as text, Codase understands programming
languages, and treats code as code, the way it’s supposed to be. This
unique and syntax-aware approach provides the most accurate and
detailed search results with fine granularity levels of controls. With
Codase, one can search functions, classes, strings, constants, macros,
comments and other programming language constructs.
Codase hosts huge amount of open source codes providing a much better
coverage, as it covers codes usually hidden inside compressed files and
source control repositories, where general search engines fail to find
and index. In addition, Codase only indexes and searches high quality
codes with every line of code literally validated and compiled by
intelligent and powerful source code analysis engine.
I just started using Koders Eclipse plug-in. It’s mind blowing! The plug-in has a SmartSearch feature that finds code for me. Koders has inverted the search paradigm. This is a remarkable innovation.
you can download the Koders plug-in here