Programming

This. Replace commonly used code snippets well written code that reduces them to one or two lines of code and take advantage of auto-complete in your IDE.

For the rare case where that doesn't make sense... I'm I'll ususally find (or create) an extension/plugin for my IDE. Something that can be smarter than any snippet.

The only case I use snippets for is for debug code that I use often. Sometimes there are things I find myself doing a lot for debugging that don't have any reason to be in code (e.g. nicely formatting certain objects for debug purposes)

Seriously. A snippet library seems like a significant anti-pattern.

Not OP, but I'm thinking about the example in vs code: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippets
Some boilerplate code for libraries and frameworks I constantly use.
I'd be more interested in syncing the VS code snippets as they are automatically available in a file for each language and have the autocomplete stops.

In PHP, a lot. Unit test are boilerplate 90% of the time, getters and setters (although they can be done via Generate), ORM classes with your default shebang (autoincrement ID), and I could go on and on.

I dislike snippets for code like "key this array by some logic" - this should be reusable via a dedicated helper or service.

Let’s say a function, about 20 lines. Something too small to warrant an external dependency but tricky enough that you don’t want to keep rewriting it.

I have things like a function to read through a file of newline delimited text of key-value pairs separated by whitespace. It skips comments (lines beginning with “#”), and returns the pairs. I’m happy to do a little copying instead of having a little dependency.

It's got to be here somewhere... (Search for way too long.........) Dang, I guess I'll just write it again from scratch

Yeah, this is what I am looking to avoid.

For github users, yes. I am not one, most of the time.

Easy access to small snippets of code you often need, but putting them in their own library would be crazy.

• Opening a file / db connection
• parsing xml/json/... ,
• template for unit tests,
• import and initialization of framework at work.

Depending on the IDE snippets can also move parts of the code around: (intellij live templates)

• variable.notnull -> if (variable != null) {... }
• "text %s".format -> String.format("text %s",...)

Think about how you write code. Is it all new, or are there functions / API calls / whatever that you might re-use from time to time?

If that's possible, think about how you go find that code now. Wouldn't it be cool if you could type a short bit like, "funcA" and boom! your IDE filled in the whole function? Or, worst case, you flip over to another tool, find the snippet you want, copy and paste it into your work.

That's what I am thinking about, at least. I'm just not sure how I want to get there yet.

Hmmm, I am using Logseq for that kind of note rn, but don't really like the way it handles code. I assume that's a markdown problem, not a Logseq one, but I should look again.

Thanks. I am thinking about whether a self-hosted service is overkill for this, for my purposes. I kept my question broad in order to find out if most people just keep their snippets on their own PC or what.

I will check this out and I'm also looking at Snibox.

SNIPPETS code is tested with PC compilers from Microsoft, Borland, Watcom, and Symantec/Zortech, unless otherwise noted

Borland! There's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

That's where I am now. I keep seeing snippets tools and so I asked here. Now that you've seen these replies, what do you think?

I assume the answer is very specific to the coding you do & your workflow. There's no single right answer.

I mean, I get it. But... damn.. can you imagine the relative computing power required to read a text file versus asking a LLM to generate that same text?