How do you manage re-usable code snippets?

#discuss #productivity

This thread asks which functions people keep around to copy into various projects.

Which functions/methods do you...

JoelBonetR ・ May 9 ・ 1 min read

#javascript #react #node #discuss

But my question is... How do you manage this? Which programs do you use to manage your personally re-usable code snippets? Text editor? Note-taking app? Thanks!

Oldest comments (9)

Jeremy Friesen • May 9 '22

I use org-roam paired with org-babel. Org-roam helps me tag and relate it. Org-babel means I have rich "backticks"; meaning the code is editable and runable.

Below is an example. The first two paragraphs are "prose" and the #+BEGIN_SRC line indicates that what follows is PlantUML code, which I can run from Emacs and will generate the file feed-strategy-erd.png.

Below is a rough sketch of the Entity Relationship Diagram I would use were we putting all of this in the database.

The goal of these conceptual tables is to provide a means to configure and generate SQL that calculates each article’s relevancy score based on the user’s preferences.  And to then return the most relevant articles for the user.

#+BEGIN_SRC plantuml :file feed-strategy-erd.png
  @startuml
  !theme amiga

  entity experiment {
      ,* id
      --
      ,* label
      ,* start date
      ,* end date
  }

  entity variant_experiment {
      ,* experiment_id
      ,* variant_id
      --
      ,* probability of using this variant

  }

  entity variant {
      ,* id
      --
      ,* label
      ,* order_by_lever_id
  }

  entity variant_relevancy_lever {
      ,* variant_id
      ,* relevancy_lever_id
      --
      ,* config (e.g. relevancy score range)
  }

  entity order_by_lever {
      ,* id
      --
      ,* order_by_fragment
  }

  entity relevancy_lever {
      ,* id
      --
      ,* label
      ,* user_required
      ,* select_fragment
      ,* joins_fragments
      ,* group_by_fragment
  }

  experiment ||--|{ variant_experiment
  variant ||--o{ variant_experiment
  relevancy_lever ||--o{ variant_relevancy_lever
  variant ||--o{ variant_relevancy_lever
  order_by_lever ||--o{ variant
  @enduml
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
[[file:feed-strategy-erd.png]]

Jeremy Friesen • May 10 '22

The above is an example of code I don't often call but want to remember.

Otherwise, I use a snippet manager. For Emacs that's a mix of Yasnippets (for ye'old Textmate style snippets) and Tempel when I want more bare metal Lisp snippets.

Roma Tou • May 10 '22

I use SnippetsLab on Mac. A great app that has the needed features (fragments, notes, language markup and highlight). 100% worth it.

cem kaan kosali • May 10 '22

I don't use any service or software anymore. Just use your IDE sync to collect all your snippets
I will share just two links.
code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/...
code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/...

rxliuli • May 10 '22

If it's really repetitive, I'll use a snippet from vscode

Andrew Baisden • May 10 '22

I use GitHub Gists gist.github.com/discover

grant horwood • May 10 '22

i have a sample project called 'bintracker'. i throw everything in there. it's also the reference point for onboarding new people.

Matthew Daly • May 10 '22

I use a snippets manager in Neovim. Don't recall which one off the top of my head, but they're all very similar. I maintain a few of my own in a filetype plugin package I made for my own use which is available on GitHub.

That said, in the last few weeks I've been using Copilot and that's made a lot of those redundant since it can create a decent starting point for many use cases without having to actively store snippets yourself. It seems to learn what you use a lot too and suggest it when appropriate. It's not perfect and you can't just trust everything it suggests, but it's incredibly handy.