Technology behind the site
Hi! My name is Ian
Ippolito and I am the original creator of Planet Source Code. It was first
written with Microsoft Visual Interdev 1.0
and Microsoft Access. The scripting is done with a technology called Active Server
Pages (ASP) and is done using VBScript. Currently it is running from Microsoft Visual Interdev 6.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, and I can guarantee
that as technology changes, so will the technical foundation of the site.
How it came about
The idea for this site came to me back in 1997, when I began
looking for Visual Basic source code on the Internet. I was frustrated by the lack
of quantity of source code, as well as the amount of time I had to spend downloading .zip
files which were of questionable quality and relevance to what I was looking for. I
thought it would be really useful if there was a site that allowed me to actually see the
code before I downloaded it, and maybe even let me copy and paste it from my browser to
VB, so I didn't have to go through the hassle of unzipping it.
Thus www.Planet-Source-Code.com
was born. Back then sites that had databases were VERY rare (maybe a handful of them
existed). To put it in context, this was before most browsers supported frames or
even tables. The prevailing web scripting technology at the time was CGI and Perl
which required alot of patience and time. However, when I heard of a
strange new tool from Microsoft called Visual Interdev 1.0, I was intrigued enough to
plunk down some cash for it at CompUSA.
Unlike today where you can't go to a book store without
being inundated by web development books, there were no books on how to use Visual
Interdev 1.0 at that time. Fortunately, the documentation was very good, and soon I
learned how to tie a database into with a web site. After programming it in on
my home PC in my spare time for about 3 months, I posted it to the Internet and started
off the code database with about 2,000 lines of my own code. Right away I was
amazed and excited by the fact that 50 or so people would come consistently to the site
every day. As word of mouth spread the news about Planet Source Code, it began to
grow bigger and bigger. Today, Planet Source Code has over five million lines of source
code and averages a hit every second!
Planet Source Code Milestones
Among the many changes and milestones that Planet Source Code
has gone through in it's rapid growth have been:
- Database locking problems from so many users trying to access the site at one time,
which forced upgrades from a Microsoft Access database back in 1997 to SQL Server 6.5 in
1998, and SQL Server 7.0 in 1999.
- Reaching the 100,000 lines of code mark in early 1999.
- Reaching the 500,000 lines of code mark in February 2000.
- Receiving so many hits that we had to cancel our band-width restricted account with an external
ISP and move the servers in-house in March 2000.
- Traffic increasing so rapidly that we had to purchase a second T1 in June 2000.
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