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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T11:27:06+00:00

When learning a langugage, I routinely find myself prototyping new concepts outside of the

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When learning a langugage, I routinely find myself prototyping new concepts outside of the current project, and often find myself with dozens of small, single use projects which I refer back to, as well as lots of useful code snippets which don’t necessarily belong in a function library, but need storing non-the-less.

Whats the best way to name, sort and generally look after these projects and code snippets in such a way that referring back to them when needed is quick and simple? How do you handle this?

Regards

Moo

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  1. Editorial Team

    What I’ve done (under .NET):

    I use Snippet Compiler or (lately) LINQPad to do most spikes, then throw the results away. On the odd occasion that I’ve done a Visual Studio project, I store it in a Junk folder that’s not under source control.

    “True” snippets or macros (in Visual Studio or ReSharper) go under source control.

    What I am thinking about doing in the future:

    I heard Bobby Norton speak on Test-Driven Learning, and he recommended writing tests in your favorite xUnit flavor when learning a language/technique. You can then save them, refer to them, try to recreate them from memory, etc. He used the term “knowledge repository”. If you’re using Ruby or Java, he’s got a tool (on GitHub, as Yaraher mentioned) called shubox to help with this.

    EDIT: Presumably you would place the learning tests under source control.

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