The other day I came across a search engine namely ErrorKey that specifically for error codes and messages. It is a search service which I think it is a trend-right and should be bookmarked in the browsers for the programmers, whether she/he is a newbie, or an advanced programmer. I find it quite useful for me as well because shamelessly to say, I won’t be able to know all the error codes, or error messages when I write a certain Web software, as all the libraries are becoming more and more complex and amazingly sophisticated nowadays.

The below is a typical example I tried to test this ErrorKey, a keyword “Python” will instantly generate a succinct list of comprehensive explanation of this keyword search. Currently, it supports the error code search for the following operating systems and languages such as Oracle, Sybase, Apple, Cisco 6400, Unix Solaris, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SAP DB, Borland C, Python, HTTP, Symbian, etc. Its business model is based on Google AdSense.

Last December, I was quite impressed on a code search engine, i.e. Krugle and did posted a post on this company. Krugle has recently secured a partnership with Yahoo! Developer Network, and they come out with a new site that named as ydn.krugle.com.

Steve Larsen, CEO of Krugle remarked, “One of the reasons for Yahoo!’s success has been the company’s strong belief in opening up its products for third party developers. By publishing open APIs and helpful documentation, they create an active and engaged community and encourage developers to create applications which utilize Yahoo!’s technology in new and innovative ways. With this partnership, Krugle will make it easier than ever to leverage the true potential of Yahoo!’s open APIs and Web Services.” According to this article.

By forming this partnership, I think Yahoo! and Krugle will create a strong network and online tools for the developers to find, and share the codes available on the Web. Before this, I was thinking that maybe Yahoo! will create something similar to the Google code search engine on the Web, but it seems that Yahoo! is more likely to form partnerships or buy some good startups rather than develop their own business units.

I just came across an interesting code search engine on the Web. It is called All The Code. As listed in the Yahoo! search indexes, it stated: “By request pre-Alpha Coming December 11nth , Public Alpha delayed to January 31st”. However, this site has yet to be indexed by Google’s search engine at this moment.

All The Code is a code search engine that enabled programmers to gain access barely to Java source code on the Web. As mentioned in the above, it is still in Alpha version and I expect more programming languages could be searched on All The Code in the near future.

In the world of venture capitalist, good reputation is priceless. It is the aim of Krugle to be a market leader in code search industry that moved venture capitalists to place their confidence and money in them. Don’t be misunderstood, Krugle is not affiliated with Google in spite of both of these companies’ pronunciation quite the same to each other. This company is named after its founder’s name, i.e. Ken Krugle.

In one of its press release, Krugle announced that it has secured $6.1 million in Series B funding led by Rustic Canyon Partners. First round investors Emergence Capital Partners, First Round Capital, and Omidyar Network also participated. Additionally, Rustic Canyon Partner Mark Menell, who led this round of funding, was elected to the company’s Board of Directors.

Krugle is a code search engine that enabled programmers to gain access to source code they want on the Web. It is an Ajax based in the back-end and I personally felt that its design was really nice and cool. In term of functionality, much of the source code they crawl are through some open source sites, one of them is the well-known, i.e. sourceforge.net. In addition, one notable feature is Krugle provide code snippets from Safari Books Online. Example: While I typed “wordpress” just now, I found the right column of the sidebar that shown “Hack 39. Export Database Schema as XML”. When I clicked on it, the code shown on the window (Click here). I guess maybe Krugle has reached an agreement with Safari Books Online and hence, some preview of several books published by Safari Books Online can be accessed here.

I really impressed by the features offered by Krugle. Surely, Krugle has several competitors such as, Google Code Search, Koders, and Codase. I believed the code search industry is really stiff at this moment. In order to achieve differentiation advantage, I noticed that each one of these above listed code search engines was trying hard to convince programmers or users that they are capable in searching more codes than the others. In other words, more is more? While they all served as the free code search service providers, I wonder how they could grab the venture capitalists’ eyeballs? Is it due to the reputation of the founders and the management as I mentioned in the first paragraph? Are these code search technologies really claimed as disruptive innovation and thus, disrupt their former search players on the Web, i.e. search engines such as Google or Yahoo!.

In my observations, the code search technologies is still in infant; These code search engines could only capable in searching the content of a Web site, not within a Web site. I doubt that they can display code that made up of a particular Ajax-based Web application at this moment. If they really can, there’s another issue on the infringement of copyright. In programmers’ perspective, I strongly believed all these code search engines are running very much in tandem amongst themselves, and if a programmer don’t find what he/she want with one, he/she simply use the others.