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Samuel Vulakh has more than five years of experience developing mobile applications. In that time, he has written countless lines of code that really could have transferred to multiple projects, but finding and reusing them was too cumbersome. Pieces changed that.
“I didn't really use snippets before; I used to try to find the code in the last place I used it,” says Samuel. “I've looked at other snippet products and they were just very hard to use and overcomplicated. I like that Pieces is simple.”
Does Samuel’s old workflow sound familiar? “Let's say I was trying to use location for a client. I would try to find the last place that I used the map API and copy-paste that code,” Samuel remembers. But Pieces is different. “It's great to be able to store all [of my code snippets] in one place and access it whenever I need to.” No more combing through old project files.
Simply the ability to store and re-find code would have been enough for Samuel to add Pieces to his stack, but that’s not even close to all of the ways Pieces adds value to Samuel’s workflow.
Benefits Highlights:
- Efficient Code Reusability: Enables easy storage and retrieval of code snippets, eliminating the need to comb through old project files.
- Simplicity and User-Friendliness: Pieces stands out for its simplicity compared to other snippet management tools.
- Enhanced Code Generation: Superior to tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT, especially for generating larger code blocks.
- Time-Saving Capabilities: Significantly reduces the time required to implement functions, converting minutes of work into seconds.
- Code Transformation: Facilitates the conversion of code between different languages, like Swift to TypeScript, streamlining development.
- Automatic Annotation: Offers features like 'Annotate Code' for easy documentation and understanding of code functionalities.
- Reliability in AI-Enabled Tools: Proven effectiveness in generating functional code blocks without errors, a unique strength compared to other AI tools.
Samuel’s Tech Stack:
- Languages: Swift, Typescript, Kotlin
- IDEs: VS Code, Xcode
- Other Tools: Pieces, Chrome, GitHub Copilot
Generating Novel Code Blocks
Generative AI is all the rage, and for good reason. Auto-complete, asking questions about code, and generating new code blocks can seriously increase efficiency. Samuel uses multiple AI-enabled tools, but Pieces takes the cake for code generation, even beating out GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT.
“I really like the generation— ChatGPT never really did it for me,” says Samuel. “It would import libraries that don't exist or import private libraries that aren't accessible to the public,” he explains. Similarly, GitHub Copilot fulfills a different role in his workflow. “For very small things, GitHub Copilot is just right, because it's there as I'm typing. When I need an actual block of code to be generated, I prefer to use Pieces.”
This ease of generation, “makes my life much faster,” according to Samuel. And not just seconds faster— Pieces can add big chunks of time back to his day. “I had an issue where I needed to build a function that would generate every day in the last 30 days,” he says. “I went to ChatGPT and it wouldn't do it properly; it was returning the wrong thing. Then I went to Pieces, and it helped me cut down on time. Instead of allocating 10 minutes to implementing that function, I can just paste it into Pieces and it'll take 30 seconds.”
Translating Code from One Language to Another
One of generative AI’s underrated skills? Transforming existing code to better suit your purposes. Samuel is saving time and cutting out tedious work by taking advantage of Pieces’ code transformation capabilities.
“I mainly develop in Swift for Xcode and TypeScript,” says Samuel. “Converting Swift objects to TypeScript interfaces is sometimes really annoying. It's really great to have Pieces— I can just plug code in and convert it to a TypeScript interface.”
But, that’s not where Pieces stops! Once he’s translated his code, it’s stored in his Pieces repository. “I like to annotate the variables and what they do; in Pieces, I can just press ‘Annotate Code’ and it'll automatically do that for me,” Samuel explains.
Final Thoughts
“Pieces was the first real AI tool that worked for me,” says Samuel. “Any AI tools that I've tried before— unless they were generating small things— when generating actual blocks of code, they would just jump between errors and never actually solve any of my problems. Pieces is the first AI tool that was able to help me with my coding.”
