Pieces User Stories: Share Code with Context
From keyboard shortcuts to easy search, Pieces reduces the time it takes Greg to find a snippet and remember how to use it.
Like most machine learning engineers, Greg understands the importance of organization. Just take a peek at his Pieces repo— everything is titled, tagged and described so that he can find a snippet and know exactly how to use it in no time.
“I like to keep my snippets organized with a bit of information about what they are and why they're here,” says Greg. With Pieces, it’s faster than ever for him to add all of that information, because nearly all of it is automatically generated. “This snippet has a quick description, a related link, some tags— these were actually auto-generated, and the link was auto-saved to that one. The description was automatically generated on this one, too.”
Automatically adding context to snippets isn’t the only way that Pieces helps Greg save time. From keyboard shortcuts to easy search, Pieces reduces the time it takes to find a snippet and remember how to use it.
“So there's a data science library called Pandas, which is used for working with data frames. And in Pandas, there are a lot of similar functions for manipulating these frames. Merge, join, concatenate, and compare are four similar functions that you would use; merge, join, and concatenate are all different ways of taking multiple frames and combining them into one,” explains Greg. Then he pulls up the snippet’s information view. “So I have notes about when and where to use them in here, and here's a related link that goes to the Pandas documentation page. Now I don't have to memorize which one to use when— I just have a clear example in Pieces.”
Over time, Pieces has become the place where Greg stores everything that he needs for programming. “I have a few snippets that aren't code; they're basically notes. I normally would use a note taking app for my notes, but because I already use Pieces in my programming workflow, it makes sense to have my programming-related notes in Pieces.”
All of these features add up to Greg’s favorite: sharing snippets with Pieces links. “The number one thing that I like Pieces for is sharing code. I love to send Pieces links— like when working with one of the interns. I've sent him a bunch of links with info on how to use the snippets. They were kind of quick; I didn't add descriptions to them, but I prefer to share code with Pieces rather than sending the code through Slack because I can add like a description on how to use it or a link to documentation in there, too.”
