In today's fast-paced tech environment, developers are always on the lookout for cutting-edge tools and platforms to boost their productivity and optimize their workflows. Hashnode, with its advanced AI tools and comprehensive features, has become a popular choice among developers globally. As a developer who has experienced the AI tools provided by Hashnode firsthand, I am eager to share my insights on their transformative impact on my development journey. This article aims to offer an overview of Hashnode's AI tools and explore how they have revolutionized the way developers work and collaborate.
Overview of Hashnode
Before diving into my experience with Hashnode AI tools, it's important to understand the platform's background and the value it brings to developers. Hashnode is a thriving community platform designed explicitly for developers, where they can connect, collaborate, and learn from one another. With a vast and active community of developers, Hashnode fosters an environment that encourages knowledge sharing and growth.
Hashnode, a thriving community platform for developers, offers a user-friendly interface that streamlines publishing and sharing technical content, allowing developers to effortlessly create and customize blogs, share projects and experiences, and engage in meaningful discussions. The platform also integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub, making it easy to showcase code repositories.
Moreover, Hashnode provides a range of advanced AI tools, utilizing artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning to offer intelligent code completion, simplified documentation access, bug detection, and community insights. This combination of a vibrant developer community, intuitive interface, and cutting-edge AI tools makes Hashnode a preferred choice for developers seeking to accelerate growth, collaborate with peers, and stay current with industry trends.
Getting started with Hashnode AI
So I am very new to hashnode AI but not with AI in general. I was one of the users who got to use the AI feature in beta mode but the past few months were really hectic. I was too busy but looking back on that, I question why I was so busy. But leaving things aside, I accessed Hashnode's AI just yesterday. I didn't subscribe the premium plan instead I got a 3-day free trial.
So I wrote one article yesterday about client-side form validation. I heavily used Hashnode's AI in that article. And I am quite excited to share that I am using Hashnode's AI to share my experience with Hashnode AI.
Understanding key features
So I got a quick tour of how to use Hashnode's AI just after subscribing to it. It was kind of useful, but it wasn't very intense to understand how to use Hashnode's AI. I found three main features:
Generate article outline
Summarize article
Generate code
I thought this was it. But when I selected a few lines of text, I got various other features of Hashnode AI. Yes, I started experimenting with all of the features. I liked many of them but I felt some are just not necessary. Anyways, I will be sharing my personal experience using many features.
Writing and publishing articles
Utilizing AI to generate an outline
Most of the time when I think of writing an article, I don't get the topic on which the article is to be written, and when I do, I have a hard time defining the structure of the article. If you look at my previous blogs, you will find without any structured approach, I was writing whatever comes to my mind. So, in my opinion, this particular feature is a game changer.
Editing and formatting articles
After generating an outline, I have an approach to follow. Now I can write my full article. Then I can use Hashnode AI to polish my article.
All I had to do is just select the text, or paragraph of text that I want to polish and I get a Ask AI thing popping up on top which I can click on to get different options. I can now perform tens of operations on that.
For example, I can let AI rewrite the selected portion. Hasnode AI checks and correct my spelling and grammatical errors if exist in that portion. I can simplify the language, or convert it into English if the article is in another language.
Similarly, there are other various operations to perform. They are listed as follows:
Modify -> It helps expansion, summarization, shortening of text, etc.
Tone -> Can change the tone of a particular portion
Transform -> Turn into numbered or bullet list
Also, how can I forget about the alt text generator? But I am not quite happy with it because the alt text generated for the images I have used in this article wasn't satisfactory to me.
Publishing articles
It is impressive that the Hashnode team really decided to facilitate the use of AI from start to finish while writing an article. Hashnode AI can now write a blog title, if you are running out of time, it can summarize your article.
Better, the AI can generate an SEO title and SEO description of the article just before publishing the article. Before this, I used to copy the title of my article and use it as the SEO title and just leave the description blank. And most of the time, I used to leave both fields blank but with this AI, things have changed.
Challenges and limitations
Heading tags convert into normal text, causing no distinction between normal and head tags.
So, I wanted to simplify the highlighted area all at once but when I did that, all of the styling was removed. I like to style the article while writing and proofread it later and polish it. So this problem must be fixed soon.
Limited to correcting grammar or spelling mistakes for only around 100 words, making it difficult to spell-check the entire blog.
%[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kzbkTfr63Y]
Inability to see what was wrong or changed during spelling and grammar checks, only the updated text is visible.
In the above screenshot, I am not sure what was really changed. I have to compare both texts myself. Maybe an indicator would greatly make this feature awesome. For example, an underline could be used.
Difficulty in reading existing text due to pop-up blockades, suggesting Grammarly as a better alternative for saving time.
In the above example, I cannot even compare the two texts. I appreciate Hashnode team is aware of this. They have tried to minimize this problem and it has worked but not completely eliminated.
Occurrence of styling problems.
I have already mentioned above about this problem but I want to talk more about this in a different scenario: during Expansion. So during the expansion, the AI-generated different topics and explained them below. So I wanted the topics in the form of headings (yes, already styled) but I had to style them as headings individually. The video of this problem is provided below:
%[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1wbFGNPJkM]
Slower performance.
Generated alt text for images being significantly off from the original image, indicating a need for improvement in this area.
I think the AI summarized the article from the reader's perspective, not from the writer's perspective which I think is a problem. Just read the summary below:
Conclusion
Hashnode AI is a tool that uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning to offer intelligent code completion, simplified documentation access, bug detection, and community insights. This article explores the features of Hashnode AI and how they have revolutionized the way developers work and collaborate, although there are some challenges and limitations.
Note: The above summary was also generated using Hashnode AI which I liked the most part about but my inner self is saying me that there is something off.
In conclusion, my experience with Hashnode AI has been quite remarkable, and I eagerly anticipate exploring more features on the final day of the 3-day trial. However, I remain uncertain about whether I will invest in this tool in the future. I kindly request the Hashnode team to address any potential issues, and please feel free to correct me if I have inadvertently misused the tool in any way.
I would like to draw the attention of Eleftheria Batsou and Ayodele Samuel Adebayo to look at the challenges I face. Overall, Happy coding.
