Code Scribbler

The other day I was at school between classes, sitting at a computer waiting for several GB of files to transfer to my thumbdrive over a 1.0 connection (read: I had a half hour to spare) and I started thinking of some code for my biggest recent project, the Sermon Posts plugin.

I was on a  locked down Mac computer, and I couldn’t even get on the stupid text editor. Why they would lock out a basic text editor is beyond me, but I digress.

What I ended up doing was going into my email and writing the code there, but without syntax highlighting and auto-indentation I was not nearly as productive as I could have been. So when I got home I just went ahead and made this: Code Scribbler. Now I can write code (mixed PHP at least) from anywhere that has a browser.

Sure, there are things like Pastie that I could use, but nothing I know of quite fits the bill:

  • Private: I don’t store anything you type.
  • Simple: No ads, no extra links, very clean interface.
  • On the fly syntax highlighting (Pastie and others apply syntax highlighting when you save)

Also, I wanted to see how hard it would be to make something like this. As it turns out, the answer is: Not very.

I’m even releasing the code on my SVN: http://svn.tobiaslabs.com/codescribbler/

You can follow that link and download the numerous (two, and one is optional) files, or use something awesome like TortoiseSVN to keep updated.

Eventually I’ll add a button that lets you email yourself the code, that way you don’t even have to mess with a file, but that’s all I have planned for it. Short and sweet, unlike this post.

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