Google Unveils Code Search 212
derek_farn writes, "Google now has a page that supports source code searching. I hope they extend it to be more programming-language aware (e.g., search for identifiers and functions) like the specialist code search sites (Krugle, Koders, and Codease), who probably now have very worried investors. I don't see any option to search for Cobol. I guess there is not a lot of Cobol source available on the Internet, even although there is supposed to be more Cobol source in existence than any other language (perhaps that statement is not true in the noughties)." From the Cnet.com article: "Google engineers, many of whom participate in open-source projects, already use these code searching capabilities internally. Since it is a Google Labs project, the company is not yet seeking to monetize searches through ads."
COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while (Score:2, Interesting)
As scary as that sounds.
Restricted Use Due to Copyrights (Score:5, Interesting)
All Code herein is Copyright 2005 Match.com
Do not copy, reproduce, reuse or sell any code herein
without the express, written consent of Match.com.
For information contact webmaster@match.com.
All Rights Reserved.
Which is expected. However, that means this tool isn't useful for finding a method or function or class I can use and then using it
Useful to whom? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I search for something code related on the web it's usually because I want to know how to do something. In such cases I dont really know what the code itself would be (i.e. the reason why I'm searching) so this wouldn't help at all. I suppose if you were looking for specific code it could be useful, but why would you be doing that? That would likely be your own code, so wouldn't a simple grep be easier?
I'm sure I'm missing something here - Google doesn't (usually) release useless new products :)
Not that useful (Score:2, Interesting)
searched for backdoor password (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well this answered a question for me... (Score:2, Interesting)
I did a brief survey on "I hate [X]", and got the following:
Looks like John McCarthy [paulgraham.com] wins.
Re:COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
Basic was intended as a teaching language and so the language incorporated lots of syntax and ideas from the 2 major languages of the time: COBOL and FORTRAN.
BASIC eventually begat that idiot bastard child 'Visual Basic' and syntacticly hasn't changed much since. So you could say that there is a lot of COBOL in 'Visual Basic'. Sure, it became object focused and now OO, but it still resembles COBOL. So COBOL lives on, as Visual Basic. It will not die
And while I am on the soap box
So much of the code I have seen is just COBOL in drag. Java, VB, C++, C# etc. just COBOL programs in drag. Most people have not really changed their mindset since COBOL.
Case in point:
I showed my boss who is supposed to be an OO programmer how to abstract out a data access layer so that the layer knows nothing about the request sent to it or the exact DB structure and the requesting class knew nothing of the database. I used a few of the nicer features of C# and
My boss, supposedly a programmer didn't 'get it'. The upshot beign we ended up writing one class per DB table (as opposed to one table manager class total) and the results could have been quicker and easier in COBOL.
I will now step down off the soap box.
Re:I like this search better - fucking funny as (Score:5, Interesting)
/usr/src/linux/arch/sparc/kernel/ptrace.c
But I also stumbled upon this little gem in
* Heavily influenced by the old firewall.c by David Bonn and Alan Cox.
*
* Thanks to Rob `CmdrTaco' Malda for not influencing this code in any
* way.
*
Anyone knows if there is a story behind this comment? Is it a private joke on taco, or did he piss them off?
Re:the one thing everyone will search (Score:2, Interesting)
This is great: finding algorithms (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't find any of the software with my name on it that's on SourceForge, though.
Re:COBOL hasn't been topdog for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
"IDENTIFICATION DIVISION" "DATA DIVISION" DISPLAY PROGRAM-ID SECTION
No need for Google to develop a special search for what look less like a computer program and more like a plain text file.
Re:"Given enough eyeballs... (Score:2, Interesting)
K&R vs. Alii (Score:3, Interesting)