So I've found that one of the most effective ways of speeding up development is to maintain small snippets of code demonstrating how to do various things.

For example, here's a chunk of example code I posted to StackOverflow showing how to handle xml data in Python with lxml:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6432826/preferred-python-xml-processor/6433099#6433099

I actually have a fairly large library of similar code snippets demonstrating how to do all sorts of things. The thing is, each snippet can take anywhere from a half-hour to a few weeks to put together -- once you account for all the research time, trial and error, refinement, etc. Each snippet carries a great deal of hard earned knowledge. And while sharing is nice and all, I'm not really inclined to trade a lifetime of knowledge for a bunch of points on StackOverflow.

But still, I find code snippets like these to be highly valuable, so I was wondering if other programmers might be willing to trade somehow. Like say, I would give you my xml snippet and you give me a snippet illustrating how to use JQuery UI buttons (or whatever).

I know there are sites out there that collect code snippets, but they don't seem to be very good -- presumably due to the economic disincentive from sharing high quality examples.

This is still a very fuzzy idea... And I can see there being some issues... but maybe not insurmountable ones. I just thought I'd put the idea out there and see what people think.

My email is JesseAldridge@gmail.com if you want to talk directly.