Drentsoft Code Chat The New Home of Friendly Realtime Code Discussion

What is Drentsoft Code Chat?

Drentsoft code chat is a Java chat client/server pair

Why Drentsoft Code Chat?

IM clients like Google Talk, MSN, Skype etc don't typically preserve tabs, extra spaces etc in transmission, something that's critical for code readability. I've designed Drentsoft Code Chat specifically for discussing coding issues so these characters are always transmitted as they were intended. This is also good for complex ascii art emoticons :).

Disclaimers etc

Please note that this is a chatroom style program that lets programmers share properly formatted code snippets in realtime.

Currently all users are connected to one giant chat, as such there could be a lot of noise and obviously everyone can see your fancy code so no NDA-needing proprietary code is to be discussed within, this is a "service" (in the loosest possible sense of the word) for people wanting to learn and help each other with coding.

Drentsoft Code Chat is provided as-is. Use at your own risk!

Drentsoft Code Chat runs on a testing/development server (on a Raspberry Pi) and was developed by me to be run whenever discussing code, as such the server only runs as long as the server stays up. The testing server runs pretty much 24/7 but it does need frequent reboots so there may be periods of downtime. If you find the website working but can't access the server from the client you can manually start the server above.

Download

Please download the Java Chat Client

Future plans

1. A chat notification noise and/or taskbar flash.
   Current status:
   • The client running in Netbeans plays a sound but the sound fails to load during independent running.
2. Automatic log of all chats, either local file, online database or straight to the user's Google Chat log.
   Current status:
   • No reason local file logs can't be implemented, I just haven't got round to it yet.
   • Similar with database logs but I have no real idea how to do the Google log thing.
3. Individual and group chats for better signal to noise ratio and privacy.
   Current status:
   • I mostly know how to do this but so far there hasn't really been a need to. It would also require quite a client and server architecture design adjustment so I'd only do it if there was enough call to do so.

Known Bugs

• Urgent - Upon booting the client will ask you for a username which the server will then be sent to the server. If the username is not unique the connection bounces and you are asked for a username again. This is the expected outcome. If you provide another non-unique username the connection bounces again but for some reason you no longer get asked to input a new username. Given that this check is recursive I cannot find why the 3rd call should be failing.
• Mild - The user input panel does not grab focus when when the client starts. Workaround: Select the input panel before typing.

Privacy

Currently no data is stored about the user whatsoever. The server spews out IP addresses and usernames but that gets flushed every time the chat server is restarted.

You take responsibility for your own content and agree that you won't use the client/server to transmit sensitive or abusive messages and understand that any other user could save their own personal log and potentially steal your proprietary code if you choose to transmit it through the client/server.