So I’m looking to start storing short bits of code online. With my Java course starting tonight, it might be nice to have a place to share and exchange code with my classmates, and store for later use. I’ve been checking out some online code snippet repositories, and narrowed it down to two of the best.

Snipt.net is very pretty. It has a lovely ajaxy interface that swooshes and swashes around when you add and edit code, and just exudes polish. It has an embed function that allows you to post to a website and have the code remain up-to-date no matter how many revisions you make. Someone has also made a Wordpress plugin that makes the embedding even easier (which is nice for my purposes). What it lacks right now is an API (they’ve asked for help from the community, but there doesn’t seem to be much there right now).

Snipplr.com on the other hand is all about the API. They have plugins for all sorts of IDEs, and like Snipt, a Wordpress plugin (which on the other hand won’t let me input my API key…). They offer a bookmarklet to quickly add code from your browser, and a Textmate bundle for those of you who like that sort of thing. Like Snipt, embedding snippets is a breeze but unlike Snipt, Snipplr keeps previous versions, so revising code never overwrites previous work completely.

Already Snipplr is in front for me — even though I’m a sucker for a pretty (inter)face — but what makes it most compelling for me is the ability to “watch” other users. While Snipt offers RSS feeds for every user, I’m used to the social networking idea of following people and keeping up-to-date from within the site. Because I’m learning from my classmates and people I already follow on sites like Twitter, I need an easy way to keep tabs on what they’re coding.

So in the end Snipplr wins. If Snipt develops some of these features, I might move to it (it’s so damn purdy), but until then Snipplr is the most feature rich of the tools I’ve looked at¹. So I’ll be coding there. Watch me at joshnunn.

I’ve included embedded code from each site to show you how they look.