I also used the original phind back then. For a brief period of time, it was probably the best place around for programming questions.
Then they pivoted to flowcharts and now to "one off apps". It is a bit weird because the concepts are not bad necessarily, but instead of adding features to their product incrementally they decided to make that one feature their product. The problem imo is that there is no one size fitting all. Flowcharts or interactive content can be great, but it is not always the best fit for a search query. Like, I do believe that the chat based UI is not optimal and flowcharts and more complex interactive/dynamic functionalities are great improvements for some use cases, but I am not sure of what to make of this product. If it was a feature in a more general product that I could still get the same functionality as before, it may have been more appealing. Now it feels like they are building a new hammer every time and looking for nails that fit that one hammer.
Then they pivoted to flowcharts and now to "one off apps". It is a bit weird because the concepts are not bad necessarily, but instead of adding features to their product incrementally they decided to make that one feature their product. The problem imo is that there is no one size fitting all. Flowcharts or interactive content can be great, but it is not always the best fit for a search query. Like, I do believe that the chat based UI is not optimal and flowcharts and more complex interactive/dynamic functionalities are great improvements for some use cases, but I am not sure of what to make of this product. If it was a feature in a more general product that I could still get the same functionality as before, it may have been more appealing. Now it feels like they are building a new hammer every time and looking for nails that fit that one hammer.