Front End User Stories: Keeping Coding Magical

After careers in hospitality and stay-at-home parenthood, Frankie Bukenya knew he wanted to jump into software development. Now, he works as a front-end developer and truly loves what he does. “Development, for me, is the closest thing to magic,” he says. “You write these lines of code and they do all these really incredible things. I love problem-solving, and in frontend development, there's also the visual connection, that the user will interact with and see things that interact with the code that I write. That's very gratifying.” 

In his extra time, Frankie enjoys searching for dev tools that evoke the same magical feeling as writing code. In 2022, he found Pieces and never looked back. 

Benefits Highlights:

• Frictionless Snippet Management: Frankie Bukenya praises Pieces for its seamless snippet management, emphasizing how it eliminates the friction associated with saving code snippets. He highlights the ease of saving snippets directly from his workflow without disrupting his flow, which ultimately enhances his productivity and saves him time.

• Integration and Accessibility: Frankie appreciates how Pieces seamlessly integrates into his workflow and tools, allowing him to access saved snippets across various platforms such as his IDE, VS Code, or browser. This integration ensures that the snippets are readily available wherever he needs them, thereby streamlining his coding process and reducing the need to re-comb through forums or search engines.

• Community and Support: Frankie acknowledges the positive experience he has had with the Pieces team, emphasizing their willingness to interact with users and provide support when needed. This sense of community and support adds to the overall satisfaction of using Pieces, creating a favorable user experience beyond just the functionality of the app itself.

Frankie’s Tech Stack:

• Languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bash

• IDEs: VS Code, WebStorm, Sublime Text

• Other Tools: Pieces Desktop App, Pieces for Obsidian, Pieces Web Extension

  
  

Love at First Saved Snippet

Many of Pieces’ users came across the app through word-of-mouth, but just as many have found Pieces through serendipity. Frankie is the latter but is now working hard to spread the word. “Mind you, I tried others because there are other tools that try to do something similar,” Frankie says about snippet management apps, “They probably have their merits as well, but they're not as frictionless as Pieces. That's the thing with Pieces— it takes away the friction of storing snippets.” 

Taking away that friction truly helps Frankie to be more productive and save time throughout his day. “When I'm really in the flow, I don't want to have to change windows, put a snippet in, and give it a title. That might seem like such a small thing, but it just breaks the flow that you're in,” he explains. “Whereas with Pieces, I literally just select some code and then right-click, Save to Pieces, and it's there. I don't even have to think about it until I need to look it up again.” 

And, it’s not just the app that has impressed Frankie. He also has kind things to say about the Pieces team. “I find that you can tell a lot from how people interact with each other, and how people treat other people. The willingness of the Pieces team to answer questions, or with a team member jumping on a call with me when I lost my snippets. You don't often get that kind of connection and it just gave me a good feeling. It feels like, when there are mom-and-pop stores where everyone knows everyone, he says. “It's only been two years and I feel you've already accomplished so much. Two years from now, I wonder where Pieces will be and I'm excited for that future. I think it's going to be pretty awesome.”

Reclaim Time to Focus on What Matters

Before Pieces, Frankie had a fairly typical approach to reusing code that he’d found around the web. He’d find a terminal command or other snippet, use it successfully, and then struggle to find it again later. “It can be frustrating because sometimes you find this perfect piece of code or this perfect command, and it took you hours or even days to find it, and then you have to try various ways to retrieve that query through Google,” he says. “Now I know where I can find those things. It’s one less step, and that's the thing that Pieces brought to not just my work, but throughout my life.”

“At first, you think it's just another snippets app until you start really using it,” Frankie explains. Like some other apps, Pieces is a place where you can store useful code from your own work or from places around the web. Unlike other apps, Pieces seamlessly integrates into your workflow and lets you do far more than simply save a snippet. “It's so in the background. It's not launching pop-ups. I’m just in-flow, thinking, ‘Maybe I should keep that for later.’ Select Save to Pieces,” says Frankie. “Or I'll be working and think, “What was that thing?” And not even have to go to Pieces, but I can search from within my IDE. Hopefully, Pieces will be the default tool for snippet management.”

With Pieces, Frankie’s days of re-combing through forums are behind him. “The people who aren't yet using Pieces—they're used to going to Stack Overflow. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I couldn't go back to that way of working,” he says. “Now, I just store it in my Pieces vault and I can access it from my website, IDE, VS Code, or browser. It's in all the tools I use in my life and my work. How are people not using this?”

Final Thoughts

Frankie has one message for new Pieces users: “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!” From decreasing context switching to shaving seconds off of his workflow every day, Pieces helps Frankie keep coding magical. While he’s begun to take advantage of the AI-powered Pieces Copilot, snippet saving remains his favorite Pieces feature. “It’s my favorite tool, and so I'm always happy to talk about it,” he says. “No more notepad-saving snippets for me. If you’re doing it that way… then you need to get on board. You need to join the Pieces revolution.”