Bing Becomes The Best Search Engine For Programmers, Brings Executable Code Snippets

Microsoft has partnered with the programming community website HackerRank to bring executable code snippets into Bing’s search results page. It’s one of the best new features I’ve seen in a search engine for a long time.

Very often, every programmer needs to open the web browser search for algorithms and programs. People end us visiting websites like Stack Overflow or Mozilla Developer Network to seek help. To make this exercise easier, Microsoft has turned Bing into a specialized search engine for coding.

How to use Bing’s executable code snippet feature?

To use Bing for getting executable code snippets, all you need to is visit Bing.com and search queries like “fibonacci in c#”, “quick sort python” etc.

As soon as you hit enter, it will pop up the code editor widget for you. You can run the code here clicking on the Run Code button.

From another button in the top right corner, I was able to switch the programming languages as well and see the same code in the different language. Currently, the programming languages listed are C, C++, C#, Python, PHP, and Java.

Important note: If you are unable to see the executable code snippet feature in Bing, make sure to set your region us U.S. in bing. To do this, you have to click on Settings on Bing.com page and look for Regions in left sidebar and select United States.

HackerRank says that right now the search engine shows more than 80 code snippets that cover the most commonly searched terms.

“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,” says Bing’s Marcelo De Barros.

Go ahead, give it a try!