Sock: Software Construction Kit

See if these problems are familiar:

• You wonder about the wisdom of copy-and-paste 'reuse', but do not see any other way to achieve your ends
• You are fed up with 'wizards' which write code which you don't understand and cannot modify
• You have trouble keeping the content of multiple files synchronised:
  • you are reluctant to change the signature of an interface method because it means changing all the classes on which it is based
  • the examples in the documentation never quite match the files actually delivered
  • when a file is moved, you forget to update some reference to it in another file
• You are wary of using third party source code because you know you have to change it and are worried about the three-way 'diff' that will be required when the next version of the source code comes out.

Sock is about patterns. Anything you do in producing text files which is in the least repetitive is a candidate for improvement using Sock. It is a general purpose tool not tied to any particular language or development method.

Sock is used together with a text editor of your choice where you might otherwise use the editor directly to produce either text, XML or HTML files.