Bing Code Search Makes Developers More Productive by Rob Knies.
The problem:
Software developers routinely rely on the Internet to find and reuse code samples that pertain to their current projects. Sites such as the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and StackOverflow provide a rich collection of code samples to address many of the needs programmers face.
The process for doing so, though, is not particularly streamlined. The developer has to exit the programming environment, switch to a browser, enter a search query, sift through the search results for useful code snippets, copy and paste a promising snippet back into the programming environment, and adapt the pasted snippet to the programming context at hand.
It works, but it’s not optimal.
The Solution:
The result of all this collaboration is a free add-in, which became available for download on Feb. 17, that makes it easier for .NET developers to search for and reuse code samples from across the coding community. The news about Bing Code Search also appears on the Bing and Visual Studio blogs.
The Payoff:
A recent study indicated that Bing Code Search provides to programmers a time improvement of more than 60 percent, compared with the browser-search-copy-and-paste scenario. (emphasis added)
Whether you use category theory with your spreadsheets or not, a 60 percent time improvement on code searching for your developers is impressive!
Your next goal should be 60 percent re-use of the code they find. 😉
PS: This is the type of metric semantic integration software needs to demonstrate. Take some concrete or even routine task that is familiar, time consuming and/or hard to get good search results. Save time and/or produce markedly better results.