Sharing

The sharing category covers different ways that people share code to others (duh!). They can range from simple (like posting something on a blog) to complex, but the basic idea is that these are ways people send out snippets or full worked examples and get feedback.

Blogging / Static site

This is probably the classic method for sharing ideas about code, but it’s worth mentioning: simply blogging about it. There are a lot of great developers (Bret Victor, etc) who write beautifully about development. Many of the tools mentioned here are designed to complement blogging in one way or the other.

GitHub

GitHub is a site for sharing entire code repositories. Unlike some of the other tools mentioned here, which are more around sharing snippets or small examples, github is used to host the entire codebase for a project. in addition to hosting the git repos, it also handles collaborators, issues, wikis, forking, pull requests, and all the other elements required to run an open source project.

JSBin

JSBin (and the similar site, JSFiddle) allow you to create snippets of Javascript, HTML, CSS, and a live preview that shows the output. Once you create your snippet, you can then embed onto other sites. Think of it as a sort of YouTube for Javascript. The viewer has the option to copy it into their own account and make changes, as well. This has become a useful tool in the JavaScript community for sharing prototypes and ideas.

Gists / pastebin

gist and pastebin are services for sharing snippets of code or text. (Some people even write whole essays with them.) Once you create the snippet, you can get an embed code that you can use to embed the code onto a blog or other site. People can then copy the gist to their own account so that they can modify it.

Post suggestions or comments here.