Bing's Programming Search Tool Is Just Whatever

On Thursday, Bing, the yep-still-exists Microsoft search engine, together with partner HackerRank.com unveiled a new search capability geared toward coders. Simply: code-related queries will now bring up solutions in the form of real actual code snippets presented in a small live editor that can even run the code for you right on the spot.

Googling code is a routine thing among programmers. There exists a vast ecosystem, mostly resident on Stack Overflow, of question-and-answer forums in which literally every code-related question has been answered five times, at least. It is a strange and sometimes disconcerting realm that has bailed my ass out on more occasions than I care to admit. It is also Bing's stated target.

From a HackerRank.com blog post announcing the tool:

So, I tried it on a handful of queries, some more realistic than others. I managed to get the code sandbox to actually pop up about one-quarter of the time, even when limited to reasonably basic searches. The rest of the time Bing just returned a usual list of search results.

For example, it worked on a search for "Python for loop"—returning a canonical Python for-loop example—but I got nothing for "Python import module" (that is, it just returned normal search results). "Java initialize array to 0" gave me nothing, as did "Java print line" and "Java input string." It did, however, spit out some code for "Java for loop." Based on the above, I didn't even bother trying to feed it any actual questions from Stack Overflow.

Indeed, even very simple Stack Overflow questions aren't as atomic as this thing would seem to require. A big part of this is that they're usually not purely questions at all. Users are very frequently if not usually posting problems: "My 2dGameEngine is very laggy"; "MP3 metadata is not getting updated"; "Path change ActiveXObject not working."

And those are just the questions actually posted on the site. Certainly, most of Stack Overflow's utility to programmers comes via Google searches for the simple reason that most everything has already been asked and it's just a matter of finding the answer. It may not be a direct answer either, but a related answer to a related question that points you in the right direction for a solution to your actual question. Eventually, you get pretty good at these searches.

It does me no good to be able to run some textbook example of code in a tiny editor on a webpage. I mean, there are situations where that's useful—hence the popularity/utility of JSFiddle—but not really when I'm trying to figure a thing out by searching the internet.

For starters, the thing I'm trying to figure out is invariably part of a much larger thing and it does me little good to see it functioning in isolation. That is, going back and forth from search to my code editor is a fact of life because the code editor is where the rest of my code/program resides. Continually updating, re-compiling, and just watching a program do its thing is, like, the entire workflow. Or it can seem like it, anyway. I guess I'm OK with that.

I won't say this Bing thing is worthless, but it does kind of feel like a gimmick, at least at this stage.