Programming Is Hard is a site for sharing common code snippets and links. Sort of like Flickr for code.

Is this really a time saver, or is it a bad idea? I mean, sure, grabbing some common functionality from somewhere might get you going a little quicker, but remember Scott’s Rule of Programming #0x3eA

• “Just because code is on the Internet doesn’t mean you should cut and paste it into your production system.” It occurs to me that something like this is asking for all nature of trouble. You know that the entry-level developer sitting two cubes down from you just grabbed some code off this thing and pasted it, entirely unchecked, into a block of code that barely compiles.

On the other hand, folks have experimented with putting incorrect data into Wikipedia and found the incorrect data doesn’t stay there very long before someone corrects it. Will that same level of policing go on with these code snippets?

I think maybe there should be some nature of moderation - like you submit a snippet and then it has to be reviewed before going on the site. Or maybe that’s asking too much, and a free-for-all really is the way to go, with the implicit “buyer beware” disclaimer.