Microsoft has just launched a new community, MSDN Code Gallery, for sharing code samples, snippets and another resources to help other coders.
Somasegar describes it well in his blog:
The MSDN Code Gallery is a portal for snippets, samples and other resources. In it you can find pages that describe samples and supporting documents including screenshots and design documents. In addition, you will find hosted conversations about these samples, sample projects or other resources that have been provided to the community. This destination is open to the entire community to contribute content to.
I like that there is now a central location for samples and resources, but the fact that the samples are in .zip -files is going to be show stopper for those seeking easy reference.
Busy (or lazy) coders these days want to see the samples right-away and projects in .zip -files mean several extra steps:
- Download (and confirm all the dialogs)
- Unzip all files to a folder
- Open project/solution in the Visual Studio (or some other editor)
- Locate the interesting part from possibly several files
- Adjust the sample to your needs
- Close the solution
- Delete the folder and the zip files (or let them clutter to your hard disk)
Because of this I don’t see the MSDN Code Gallery as a competition for technology bloggers like me. I prefer posts that go to the subject right away and have samples that can be copy/pasted easily, if they suit your need.
This is supported by the fact that the most popular post in my blog ever is the article about Common Data Patterns with LINQ, which was aimed just to this audience.
I guess Code Gallery will be more like a collaboration place to share some code, videos etc between friends, co-workers and community. It’ll probably be popular for cool tools like these StickyNotes (I’ll try them tomorrow) 
Code Gallery could also be a good place to host complete demos that are described briefly in blog: "Here it is how it works, get the rest from here." That way the community gets best of the both worlds.
