codepad consumer questions

_posts/2014-02-09-codepad-consumer-questions.markdown

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Codepad consumer questions
+excerpt: A small piece of market research into the state of 
+         those-handy-little-websites-to-run-code-on.
+---
+This post is going to be short and sweet. As you can see I'm not much of
+a blogger, it being almost two years since my last message.
+
+I'm here to ask you, dear reader, for your own input on a very specific
+topic: PHP "codepads".  That is, those handy little websites where you
+can enter some code and have it be executed for you.  Here are a few, just to
+spark your memory:
+
+* http://codepad.viper-7.com
+* http://3v4l.org
+* http://eval.in<sup>†</sup>
+* http://ideone.com<sup>†</sup>
+* http://codepad.org<sup>†</sup>
+
+<aside><small>† These offer many more languages than PHP, but I use them
+all the time.</small></aside>
+
+All of these sites do one thing, and do it well, which is what I like
+about them.
+
+## What do I want of you?
+
+My main question is, **"is there room for yet another codepad in
+PHPville?"**
+
+However, I'd also welcome thoughts on good/bad things about the sites
+listed above (or others that you use), and where/how you use them, since not
+everyone will use them to help with documentation writing!) What would you
+like to see done differently for any of the mentioned websites? Do you prefer,
+or not, these simple tools over the stream of "online IDEs" available?
+
+## What's all this about?
+
+I have been using my own offline tool ("offline" here means, not available
+to the interwebs at large) when writing the PHP documentation over on php.net.
+In character it is most like 3v4l.org, being a way to execute the same
+code on many version of PHP. This is *super* useful for the PHP docs, to know
+when an undocumented change was introduced, function added/removed, and so on.
+
+I'm wondering if there would be *any* interest in yet-another-codepad, and
+if there is then what are the good folks of the PHP community most interested
+having in one?
+
+Thanks in advance. (Hopefully *someone* responds!)