SWISCO: Building a modern, reusable codebase with Tabnine

SWISCO is a family-owned company that began as a small repair shop for windows and doors in the 1970s. Now it’s an ecommerce business and the ultimate source for current and hard-to-find replacement parts. Their online catalog is filled with replacement hardware for windows, doors, closets, drawers, cabinets, and more. SWISCO is still owned by the same family — now in its third generation — and is run by CEO Paul Pallas, who’s an avid Tabnine user.

We recently met with Paul to learn more about his experience using Tabnine. In addition to being the CEO, Paul is also responsible for managing the codebase that powers their ecommerce business. Paul wrote this code more than a decade ago and over the years, this codebase has grown significantly. His goal is to modernize the codebase, making the code reusable and easier to maintain. 

A year ago, Paul came across Tabnine in a Reddit forum and was immediately intrigued by the promise of using AI to accelerate software development. Tabnine’s commitment to privacy helped Paul decide to use Tabnine. He was skeptical about using other AI code assistants on the market as he wasn’t clear how those vendors would use his code. Would they share his code with third parties? Would his code be used to train the underlying models? 

Since he started using Tabnine, Paul hasn’t looked back. He uses Symfony, a high-performing PHP framework for web development and codes in the PHPStorm IDE from JetBrains. Tabnine supports over 80 programming languages and frameworks including Symfony, and it’s proven extremely valuable to Paul. 

Tabnine makes it easy to determine how functions are declared and what variables go in it, saving Paul a significant amount of time. Instead of Googling or searching through Stack Overflow, he now uses Tabnine and gets up to speed quickly. 

Paul loves the Explain Code AI chat agent because it makes it easy to decipher legacy code using natural language. Paul leverages Tabnine to modernize his codebase and uses Tabnine regularly to refactor his code and add more functionality. “Tabnine has made my life so much simpler by helping me make sense of my old code. Tabnine has dramatically increased my productivity — it has significantly reduced the time it takes to modernize my legacy code.”

The suggestions provided by Tabnine’s code completions are also very tailored, making it easier for Paul to review them quickly and then accept them. “Tabnine understands my old code with ease. The suggestions from Tabnine are typically accurate and I often accept over 60% of the responses.” 

Overall Tabnine has made Paul a better programmer and instilled better coding habits. 

“Just wanted to celebrate a milestone. It’s been a year since I started using Tabnine! I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical at first. But let me tell you, Tabnine has become an absolute game-changer for me. I can’t imagine programming without it anymore. Huge kudos to your entire team for creating such a valuable tool.”