code-drop

code-drop is a web application made to share code snippets using literate programming. Its original inspiration came from Github's Gists.

Some snippets/Gists can contain too many comments and be overly verbose. While this is good for learning purposes, the code contained in the snippet/Gist can sometimes be hard to read due to the amount of comments surrounding it.

code-drop aims to reduce the verbosity that can sometimes come with snippets and let users focus only on the code. This is done by giving users the ability to "annotate" a snippet. All annotations provided by a snippet author can then be toggled on demand.

Using code-drop

The application is deployed on heroku.

NOTE: The application is deployed using Heroku's free tier. If there is no activity for 30 minutes then Heroku's dyno's go to sleep. This means that the application may take 10-15 seconds to load on the first request while the dyno is being woken up.

Example

The snippet below is borrowed from this gist created by Arthur Attwell. The original gist for a shell script looks like:

#!/bin/bash
cd -- "$(dirname "$0")"
# That tells the system to use a Bourne shell interpreter,
# and then tells OSX to run this script from the current directory.
# Don't echo these commands:
set +v

repeat=

while [ "$repeat" = "" ]
do
    # Clear any preexisting filename variables
    filename=
    # Ask which file we're converting.
    echo "Which file? (Don't include the .docx file extension): "
    read filename
    # Feedback
    echo "Running pandoc..."
    # Run pandoc
    pandoc -f docx -t markdown_mmd "$filename".docx --output="$filename".md --atx-headers --wrap=none --toc --extract-media=""
    # Feedback
    echo "Done. Ready for another file."
    # Let the user easily run that again
    repeat=
    echo "Hit enter to convert another file, or any other key and enter to stop. "
    read repeat
    # Otherwise end
done

Using code-drop, the outright verbosity of this snippet will be reduced and anybody reading it will have the ability to view comments only for lines/content that they are uncertain of. code-drop supports viewing snippets and their annotations in two views:

1. Block view
2. Inline view

A quick showcase of the two different views can be found in the gif below.

Disclaimer

This is something that I made for both fun and educational purposes. It is not meant to be used in any serious capacity.