14 DAY TRIAL // A Silicon Valley startup claims to have come up with a better way for programmers to find source code. Traditionally, developers use the regular search engines, such as Google, but those are not really tailored to code searches.
Developers are not simply code writers. They must also go through project documentation, license information, hints, and so on. The company claims that its search engine can deliver the precise information programmers need to solve their immediate problems.
"Krugle is a search engine for programmers," said Krugle co-founder and CEO Steve Larsen. "Today programming is more about efficiently assembling and integrating code, that it is about writing new code from scratch. The problem is, finding and evaluating the available code takes too much time. That's the problem Krugle solves."
The company also promises to improve communication between programmers by allowing them to add a commentary in a layer which floats above the source code. In addition, programmers can permanently tag code, and sets of search results, and easily share them with their colleagues.
Although the search engine is not open-source, it is based on the Apache Software Foundation's Nutch and Lucene web search projects, as well as on the Antlr parser generator. As a result, the company says it participates in the open-source projects mentioned above, and in other development communities.
"The implications of the open source movement are dramatic and can't be understated," noted Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO conferences. "Everyone agrees that open source is the wave of the future, and Krugle is riding that wave by helping programmers find the code they need to do their job."
You can register to participate in the beta test at krugle.com. The project is set to go live for testing on the 8th of March at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.