Microsoft has upgraded Bing to let you edit and run your code live, without even requiring any IDE installation. To offer you the live code editor within its search engine, the Redmond giant has partnered with HackerRank.
Palo Alto, California-based HackerRank gives you a “streamlined alternative” to sites like Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. This new option allows you not just to find some of the needy snippets but also to edit and run your codes live within Bing search.
“Typically, engineers go to search engines to get answers on various sites like Stackoverflow, Stackexchange and other blogs. Now, you have a streamlined alternative that will not only spit out the code solution you need but also edit the code and play with it in real-time,” HackerRank co-founder Vivek Ravisankar and Bing engineering manager Marcelo De Barros wrote in a joint blog post.
How to run codes within Bing searches
You can edit and run your codes in your Bing search results by passing a search query like “string concat C#” or a question such as “quick sort Java”. The search engine uses a preset algorithm to show you your code on top of the results. However, the language options are so far limited to C, C++, C#, Python, PHP and Java.
“In addition to learning how a certain algorithm/code is written in a given language, users will also be able to check how the same solution is constructed in a range of other programming languages too –- providing a Rosetta-stone model for programming languages,” Barros said in a separate statement.
The new development comes months after Microsoft integrated Bing-powered compiler into Visual Studio 2015. The Redmond giant additionally has its Developer Assistant plugin to deliver you an advanced programming experience on its search engine.
Microsoft’s efforts to incline Bing towards developers are seemingly aimed to counter Google Search that presently leads the market of the search engines. Moreover, the latest move is enough to convince some software developers to opt Bing over Google.
I like the concept, what is the reason to waste your time writing another part of a code if you can find it already online? For example on Ideone, where you can search among tens of languages there are lots of public code that can be found. There is another useful feature – that within the compiler you can see if the code compiler correctly or not.