Few things are as important to a programmer as a good toolset: editors, build suites, and version control are vital for our craft. A coding assistant like Phind could be your latest valuable addition.
What Is Phind?
Think of Phind as an AI-driven alternative toStack Overflow. Instead of a small expert panel, or a larger group of enthusiastic volunteers, Phind employs the power of AI.
Phind is a search engine tuned to the needs of developers. Like other AI chat apps, it charges for advanced plans but you’re able to use its basic functionality without having to pay. This default free plan uses a model called Phind-34B which gives promising results.
How Do You Use It?
Go to thePhindweb app and you’ll see a minimalist search engine interface, reminiscent of Google’s home page. Enter a coding-related query, hitEnter, then marvel at the results:
you may ask follow-up questions that Phind will answer in context. You can even be quite vague in your wording and Phind will understand your meaning. For example, I asked a question that anyone brand new to programming might wonder:
What does a=a*2 do
And Phind gave me a useful answer:
Following up, I asked:
is there a shorter way
And the response clearly shows how Phind recognizes exactly what I meant:
You don’t need to worry about formatting your question perfectly at all. Drop punctuation, ignore case, misspell words; Phind cares not for these conventions!
How Good Are Phind’s Answers?
All well and good, but how does Phind actually perform? I tested it with a range of challenges to see if it can reasonably act as a useful coding assistant.
A Very Basic Coding Question
As a baseline, I wanted to see if Phind could answer a very straightforward question about language syntax. This is the kind of question a programmer may ask if they’re using an unfamiliar language, or trying to find out about a more obscure feature.
I asked Phind:
what does the javascript ??= mean
I purposefully chose not to include the term “operator”, to make the task a tiny bit more challenging, and to reflect a real-world scenario. Sure enough, Phind had no problem answering this query in just a few seconds:
The response includes:
This is all correct information that is valuable for learning or reference. Note that the code samples link toReplit, a free code editor. Follow the link and you’re able to run the code sample to see its effects in action.
A More In-Depth Code Example
I wanted to see if Phind could provide a weightier code sample. I asked:
how do i write a linked list please just give me the code
A linked list is a classicdata structure that every programmer should know. It’s certainly something that a tool like Phind should understand and be able to answer questions on.
Fortunately, the results were good:
This is just a small excerpt from the full code sample. In total, Phind gave me 60 lines of commented, nicely structured C code. I didn’t ask specifically for code in C, but the language is a reasonable default since many others include a linked list structure in their standard library already.
The code compiled—without errors or warnings—and ran as expected.
An Opinionated Question
Next, I wanted to see how well Phind might do in a basic Computer Science exam. This called for a more theoretical topic, steering away from code and veering towards opinion. Phind had no issue with this. I asked:
which is better iterative or recursive
As a subjective question, this might have been a bit unfair.Recursion is a challenging conceptthat you may use to great effect, but neither approach is better all the time. Phind carefully avoided coming out in absolute favor of either approach:
This answer is balanced, with clear arguments for and against each approach. Once more, for researching a specific issue, Phind looks like a great bet.
Fixing a Bug
Repairing broken code is a tricky task involving not just a solution, but an initial diagnosis too.
what’s wrong with the following code
function factorial(n) {
if (n = 0 || n == 1) return 1;
return n * factorial(n - 1);
Of course, the bug is one I’ve introduced on purpose, to test Phind. But it’s a common mistake, arising from a typo, that any programmer can make regardless of experience.
Phind did a great job of identifying the cause of the bug and suggesting a solution:
Just How Useful Is Phind?
I’m not AI’s greatest fan, so I approached this tool with caution. I still think that, as a programmer, you should be careful and take the time to understand these responses yourself.
Phind isn’t perfect. As a response to my first coding question, it suggested that “a=a*2” is “a shorthand for a = a * 2” which isn’t really true, unless you’re counting removing spaces as a shorthand!
However, Phind impressed me overall. Not only is the free tier reasonably fast, but it also seems to handle a variety of questions well. Phind’s responses were mostly accurate and usually contained useful information that could help a programmer struggling with a problem.
As an alternative to Google, Stack Overflow, or Reddit, it seems likely that Phind will be able to answer most of my questions in less time, with less effort. I’ll certainly be adding it to my toolkit to make future programming a bit less painful.
