I just posted this on my blog (http://blog.curthibbs.us/), but I thought
that it was important enough to warrant cross-posting on both the
ruby-talk and rails mailing lists (please don''t miss my call-to-action
in the very last paragraph).
Curt
=============
O’Reilly’s CodeZoo was launched last April supporting only
Java, but just two days ago a new release of CodeZoo now
includes Ruby and Python!
CodeZoo is a site for any developer who wants to
avoid writing code. We believe the best code is
the code you don’t have to write—the pieces already
done for you, as well or better as you would do them
yourself.
CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely
available, reusable components, getting you past the
repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest and the
best of your projects. It’s a fast-forward button for
your compiler.
This is something that the Ruby community badly needed: a
centralized place where Ruby packages can be categorized,
reviewed, rated, and commented on. CodeZoo goes beyond even
this with download tracking, RSS feeds, and much more.
This is an excellent compliment to RubyForge. RubyForge is
an excellent home for open source Ruby projects, but provides
now way to review, rate, or comment on Ruby packages. This
makes it hard to find things and determine the quality of what
you do find.
What would be really useful would be some basic cross-site
integration between CodeZoo and RubyForge. I’m going to think
about what could be done here and see if I can cajole the
masters of both sites to cooperate for the benefit of us Ruby
developers. But even as things stand today, this is a major
step forward.
WHAT CAN YOU DO
The benefit of CodeZoo comes from us, the Ruby developers,
when we add to its knowledge base. Please take some time to
go to CodeZoo (http://ruby.codezoo.com/) and review, comment,
and rate various Ruby packages. O’Reilly has put a lot of
effort into this site. Now its up to us to make it truly
useful.