BlogNifty

I've just added a new "live cheat sheet" to the http://cognifty.com/index.php/tutorial/ section. I've seen some other projects which have these so-called "cheat sheets", but the cheat sheet is simply a huge PDF. These PDFs usually show a graphical representation of the software system as a set of colored blocks and arrows with tiny variables written inside the blocks. These variables are supposed to help you remember which functions are available at which points in the system.

While it's nice to have an overview of a system with colors and blocks, I don't really want to have to have a PDF reader loaded while I'm developing. So, I'm trying to do a sort of "live cheat sheet", in which you find what you want to do, you click the words, then you are able to simply copy and paste the sample code into your application.

I thought this would be good since a couple of people are always asking me how to do this and that in Cognifty. To me, it's very easy because I know exactly where each type of example code is located. I know that the blog system has the best implementation of the Spam blocking Trusted Service framework. I know that the admin system makes extensive use of the data grid MVC. The problem is, other people don't know these things off the tops of their collective heads.

I'll admit it, a fair amount of my coding time is spent using VI to copy (yank) and paste code from one module to another. I do this even if the code will require significant changes, because it seems a bit easier, or perhaps safer. But, how many other people copy all the boring "scaffolding" from one class to another? For frameworks that generate "scaffolding" code, I would consider typing the command to generate the code just as time consuming as copy, paste, search, replace.

I've already used this system myself to remember the exact class names and function names for some template methods. So, I believe it has some validity. Not only does it help jog a developer's memory and cut down on hunting for good copy/paste code, I think it gives new people a very good idea about what their work will look like inside a framework/application. Instead of seeing all around the code (the class definitions, the function names, the parameter signature) one can actually see inside the code, if you will. This type of code makes up the the day-to-day meat of coding in a system, not the elegant back-end or class hierarchy, which may or may not directly impact a developer.

Is this type of system obsoleted by IDEs with code completion? Is it useful? Does it give anyone a better insight into the CGN code-base?