Codefetch

Safari vs. Codefetch on Amazon's Best Sellers

2006-02-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

Can you rely on O'reilly's paid Safari service for the latest code from programming books? Apparently not. I knew Safari was lacking independent publishers like Pragmatic Programmers, but when I did this experiment I was surprised they don't even offer their own bestsellers. Strange. Anti-cannibalism perhaps?

We took Amazon's computer bestseller list for February 21, 2006, eliminated non-programming books, and looked at whether the books are code-searchable on Safari or Codefetch:

Book	Code on Safari?	Code on Codefetch?
DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model	no	yes
Head First Design Patterns	no	yes
Ajax in Action	no	yes
Professional ASP.NET 2.0	no	no
Agile Web Development with Rails : A Pragmatic Guide	no	yes
SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide	no	no
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition	no	yes
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML	no	no
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software	no	yes
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions	no	yes

More C Code

2006-02-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

The publicity from Wired and Slashdot has yielded more searches for C and C++ topics than ever before and I noticed there were not enough results. A little research showed that we were missing some good C books because the publishers didn't categorize them as C books. After a little digging we added much more C code last night and more C++ too. We'll add two new Ajax books on March 1 when they are officially published.

Codefetch on Slashdot and Wired News

2006-02-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

Codefetch got a little boost of activity from being mentioned on Slashdot and Wired News on Friday.

Wired issued this article about not-yet-operational search code search engine startup krugle, and mentioned codefetch and koders as competitors.

Slashdot picked up the story with this posting whose comments discuss codefetch. On slashdot there was initially some confusion that maybe Google had launched Krugle.

New Languages: Delphi and Pascal

2005-10-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

Added search for Borland's Delphi (an oo pascal) and Apple's AppleScript (the successor to hypertalk and similar to early versions of Lingo). In the press release I mention how we found used copies of a classic Delphi book selling for hundreds of dollars on Amazon.

New Feature: Search Codefetch on your site

2005-10-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

Now your own site can have the little codefetch search box like this page does. Visit the Codefetch tools page. Also now you can use much shorter yubnub commands like cfas for a codefetch search of Flash ActionScript. See the tools page for all of them.

Ontology

2005-10-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed this article about categorization vs. search vs. tagging: Ontology is overrated

Codefetch uses a bit of old-school categorization because its actually useful in codefetch's domain (most code is one and only one language). But we're thinking hard about where we should be ignoring categorization and how we might help our users create new information relationships.

New Feature: oo API search

2005-10-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

API search now supports object-oriented languages. Ruby and Java are the first to be implemented. Search for "button" in java and at the top of your results page you'll see links to the javadocs for java.awt.Button, javax.swing.JButton, and other classes that contain the word button, and below that, methods that contain the word button.

Other changes: API search results ranking for other languages have been greatly improved when using multiple-word queries. Bugs causing occasional server errors fixed.

Answers

2005-10-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

A list of answers provided by codefetch to questions asked in user forums

New Feature: Popular

2005-09-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Google Zeitgeist, we've added the Popular page where you can see for what people are searching and in what languages.

Testimonials

2005-09-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Matthew Haughey on a.wholelottanothing.org
codefetch{ awesome new service that searches all code samples from books on programming languages.

Mads
Immediately bookmark this website: codefetch-{. So freaking cool: it searches code samples from programming books! And shows you the results! And this makes me immensely immensely happy

Pete Freitag
CodeFetch is a clever little app...

^Lestat at Beginnercode.com
I rencently found a neat site that searches for code snippets published in books. codefetch { lists 19 different programming languages to choose from. The first querry I ran for a php script was fast, and returned many results... I think it’s great!

Paul Johnson
codefetch{ is a brilliant source of Code in any programming language (including coldfusion). It is a great resource for any coder needing to dabble in other programming languages.

Steve Stedman
Codefetch is still very new, but useful results are obtainable surprisingly fast

Bill Covert
This is a very nifty tool. Thanks...

Matt
Here's a very cool site for you to check out. php.codefetch.com...Go give it a try!

Nat of O'Reilly Radar (posting no longer extant)
codefetch · Clever! They index code snippets from books whose code tarballs
are available on the net..

Jake Sutton
codefetch{ very cool

Raymond Brigleb
There is a very clever service now available for programmers called Codefetch...No ads or anything, just great search results for programmers.

Oskar Austegard
Bad logo, good code search site: codefetch{

Dalibor Dvorski
This has to be the coolest thing I’ve seen since Google first came on the web – of course for programmers. Codefetch allows you to search for code snippets...

Scott Walters author of Perl 6 Now
http://perl.codefetch.com searches examples from piles of Perl books, including Perl 6 Now! Try for example http://perl.codefetch.com/search?qy=delegate&lang=perl...I'm still grooving on how neat this is.

Buffalosoft
a great online utility.... Keep up the good work.

forceboy
www.codefetch.com - coolest sample code repository ever.

de:bug blog (babelfished from German)
Will unite from you perhaps esoterisch to occur, but I finds greatly, above all if one introduces oneself, how much one could still expand... Thus applause for Codefetch{.

freeonline.it (from Italian)
Codefetch.com is a search engine dedicated to the world of the programming. Its specialty is indexing the specific elements of sources analyzing them as actual code and not like simple text keywords. Codefetch.com...is a useful instrument for finding resources and useful material for programmatori.

New Feature: rss feed / bookmarklet

2005-08-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

Update-- As of 8/30/05 4pm PST this rss feed works. It was broken previously.

You can now get a list of the currently supported Codefetch languages as an rss feed. With Firefox this allows a handy trick-- click the rss icon and add the feed as a bookmark (maybe right on your bookmark toolbar). Then you have a menu that will take you straight to your Codefetch language of choice.

yubnub interface to codefetch

2005-08-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Somebody added a command line interface for codefetch within yubnub.org. The command is cfe. Thanks somebody!

New Feature: language domains

2005-08-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

Added the ability to go straight to the language you want. e.g.

Only works for languages not marked experimental (sorry Swarm users). For now, the only effect is to preselect your language (overriding your last language cookie). In the future it may take you to a page dedicated to your language of choice.

To celebrate, I submitted the news to a few perl and php sites. PHP site Codewalkers.com picked it up on their front page.

Codefetch now up to full server capacity.

2005-08-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I added a fast, new Intel-based server to the pool. I've seen some info on what a slashdotting entails, and we should have plenty of capacity for it. I'm going to add some more features before I submit the codefetch story to /., however.