AllTheCode have today launched a new code search engine which has joined a group of existing solutions including site such as Krugle, Koders and Google Code Search, no less. We previously wrote about the state of code search in a post about the then new Google Code Search, and we pointed out that in our own tests that none of the sites seemed to return adequate results.
Today we put AllTheCode to the same tests, and the results were varied. While AllTheCode does return very relevant results, it doesn’t allow the user to filter the results based on the programming language or any other variables. The press release for the launch of AllTheCode mentioned that the ranking is based on how frequently the code snipet has been implemented, which seems like common sense for a code search engine but it seemed to be lacking in the other code search engines the last time we ran them.
In the last post, one test was to search for an implementation of the MD5 algorithm, with AllTheCode the first page of results are mostly Java implementations - we couldn’t find a way to filter the results (the site says they are returning Java results only for now). If you are a programmer, your best results might be to use a mix of the various code search engines, at the moment there is no clear leader which means that there is a clear opportunity for one of these apps to take the lead.
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Well, in the AllTheCode front page it says “Java Only for now”, so I guess that’s why you’ve got mainly Java results to your MD5 search. I don’t know if that note was there when you reviewed it though…
Without any doubt, the best way for this work, is consult various code search engines, as he says above. AllTheCode still have much work for do.
see this http://enginepuller.com/engine.....earch.aspx
Madonna after car crash…
http://www.businessinvestia.com
I like krugle better.
But eventually Google will win this war, if there is any.
Searching for anything with a special character such as a colon or bracket in it will throw a rails application error… I imagine that when searching for code that happens quite a bit, seems like it could be handled a little better by a code search engine.
Looks real shit in FF
Java only!!!
As far as I know, Codase http://www.codase.com has been live for at least more then one year. I am curious why no news portal ever mentioned while newcomers in this field even got much bigger fundings and attentions. Looks like Codase did not do a good job to promote itself.
Holden is a young guy and very very smart from what I’ve seen. Expect to see him working for Google soon.
Hi Nik,
The main problem with returning good hits for a query such as “md5″ is that it’s hard to figure out what type of search the user is doing.
For example, are they looking for an implementation of the MD5 algorithm (actual source code), or finding some existing components that they can call, or finding examples of how to call some component that they already know about?
I’d blogged about this issue previously (http://blog.krugle.com/?p=193) - what I called “Semantic code search”.
Google Code Search is already way ahead of its competitors for me.
Thanks for the tip Nik. I did a quick comparison (with screenshots) of AllTheCode, Krugle, Koders, and Google Code Search here:
http://www.developmentnow.com/.....+Code.aspx
I searched java code for “luhn” (i.e. the credit card validation algorithm).
Hey Ken, I understand the problems you guys are facing, I am sure that it can be done though
Ben: Very cool
I took a second look at AllTheCode today and it seems broken in many ways, the lack of input filtering is remarkable, it even allows you to inject Javascript into the main search box:
http://search.allthecode.com/s.....int=Search
Unbelievable, its 2007 and developers are still making such fundamental mistakes. I don’t think I would have written about this if I had tested the above.
I doubt Google will hire this guy
Xiang: Thanks for the pointer, I will include them in the next wrap-up. I haven’t heard about them before.
I interview a lot of programmers and I hate it when to my “how would you do that” they say — “I don’t know, but I can google it”. It seems that there is entire new class of “google copy and paste programmers”, which just makes me scary. These guys can’t code without google and they just brainlessly copy pieces of someone else’s broken code making software, which is insecure, unreliable and depends upon three implementations of XML parser, two GUI libraries etc… So yup, let’s improve the code search — let’s produce more brainless programmers, who will make more awful software.
Nik:
The input filtering is certainly an issue that I overlooked, I’ve spent most of my time working on the back end, and the frontend didn’t receive much attention. The input filtering issues should be fixed now
Ben:
Right now All The Code is only searching the low hanging fruits (.java files with the right content type which parse and in the AWSP database). I’m looking at adding cvs/svn and inspecting archive files to grow the amount of code that is in the index. I’ll admit the UI still needs a lot of work, I’m trying to find someone who has a better sense of design than I do to work on that
Guys,
Check out http://grepcode.com. Its provides a new level of search and browsing for open source Java code.