ga********@myway.com wrote:
>Is there a better way than just saving the code files in a folder with
a description of what each does?
What I've settled upon is this: (1) I keep all my completed projects
on the hard disk in a directory c:\comp, and from Visual Studio I use
Search>FindInFiles to scan every single one of them for any keywords.
But much more usefully, (2) When I've learnt something, I write it up
as a tutorial or example program. I've submitted some tutorials to
codeproject.com. More recently I've stored them on my own website in
wiki format. That's because other people *will* read them, use them,
find bugs, and submit bugfixes. Previously they'd email me the
bugfixes, or send them as comments to codeproject, but I was always
too busy to change anything. I'm hoping that now in wiki format it'll
be easier for me (and others) to make changes.
An important discipline for this: *ALWAYS* include a complete
compilable example program for download, so people can download it and
compile it and see if it really does work. Otherwise you'll get
frequent emails from people who don't understand the Visual Studio
project system. Also, a screenshot helps a lot.
I've found it useful to include the complete source code of my
programs on the web-pages themselves. That way, you can google-search
for particular library function-names and find them.
http://www.wischik.com/lu/Programmer
The reason for all of this is that unmaintained code will inevitably
die. Just saving your code snippets in a folder, you'll forget what
they did, they'll stop working in newer compilers, they'll get out of
date, and your archive will lose its value.
The other reason for doing this is that, by and large, I've learnt an
enormous amount from other people in newsgroups and websites. This is
my way of giving back to the community.
--
Lucian