[HN Gopher] Get better at Googling
___________________________________________________________________
Get better at Googling
Author : sudo_overflow
Score : 535 points
Date : 2021-04-23 06:37 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (markodenic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (markodenic.com)
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Google used to be better, I feel.
|
| Nowadays when you add a particular word to make the search
| specific (otherwise it's too general), Google decides for you,
| there aren't many results with that keyword, so it excludes the
| word and gives you a list of irrelevant things.
|
| Yeah I know to put the words I want in quotes, but why doesn't it
| do that by default?
| whitepaint wrote:
| I've read similar comments so many times. Am I the only one who
| thinks Google has become way way better than it used to? Very
| often I get immediate answers even without needing to click on
| any site. It's truly magical.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I agree with you. There are way too many "X used to be
| better" for all of them to be true, most likely you don't
| remember all the bad parts.
|
| I remember when half of search results would be pages
| literally filled with nothing but keywords to get hits. I
| remember getting a ton of programming results from forums
| that couldn't even format code snippets properly.
|
| Not to be dismissive of other people's subjective experience
| but it seems to be like nostalgia glasses remembering things
| in a more favorable way from the past.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I noticed this effect too, but then I considered it might be
| something related to actually becoming competent.
|
| Do you think concert pianists bother to pull up lists of scales
| on google after the 10,000th hour of practice?
| eitland wrote:
| Lately I've actually been getting better results and I have
| complained about search quality for over a decade: first time I
| wrote about it must have been around 2008 I think.
|
| A time or two I have even seen it admit that no results matched
| my query (for those who wonder: this is a good thing! Knowning
| there are no known results is a valid and useful result in its
| own right!)
|
| It is still not consistent but now it is at least not
| consistently annoying.
|
| Sadly this means it is now marginally better than
| DuckDuckGo.com who more or less consistently thinks it knows
| better than me if I search for something unusual.
|
| I'll still use DDG first and only fall back to Google.
| input_sh wrote:
| > Yeah I know to put the words I want in quotes
|
| That also doesn't work reliably anymore. Somewhere along the
| line Google changed it from "exact words" to "exact words and
| synonyms", with its definition of a synonym being pretty dumb.
|
| Search for something obscure to do with "nginx" and Google
| shows you results for apache2, even bolding apache2 to indicate
| a match.
|
| Using DDG's !bangs is far superior.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Bang for what engines? DDG has a similar problem with the
| usage of "-dogs". This just means fewer dogs in results, not
| excluding all results with dogs. If you want more dogs you
| can actually do "+dogs" which somehow changes the weighting
| of terms.
| input_sh wrote:
| Using "nginx" in DDG will never return websites that have
| apache2 (and not a single mention of nginx) as a match,
| Google will.
|
| As for the last sentence, I was using the said example to
| generalise that it's far better to learn which website is
| right for the query and add a bang. In this case
| "<something obscure> nginx !sf", which will return
| serverfault.com results, which also won't do this stupid
| thing of equating apache2 and nginx.
| loonster wrote:
| Google works much better when you use the information they know
| about you.
|
| At the office, I get much better work related searches than at
| home. This has the benefit of profiling my coworkers and not
| just me, and the searches/ sites visited are generally work
| related.
|
| Edit: I don't like Google's intrusiveness either. I do not use
| it much at home. The searches are better when you teach it with
| better data. Searching in a a place that others have taught it
| with similar good results (work) will yield better results than
| if it was learned at places searching for terms that are
| similar but in different fields.
| 2snakes wrote:
| There's an idea: you get better results based on the
| corporate IP you're coming from. :(
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| If you work in a large organisation and use Slack, I think that
| Slack search is overlooked by people. Most forget that it's even
| there, but I've found it has saved me a lot of time for getting
| answers to any organisation specific issues that I cannot google.
| "query in:#channel" and "query from:@person" are very useful.
| domano wrote:
| Funny how this is overlooked while slack stands for "Searchable
| log of all conversation and knowledge"
| darylteo wrote:
| Cause you now have to pay for that luxury... otherwise you
| only get 3 days worth of history :)
| domano wrote:
| I don't use slack a lot so this was new to me. Wow, kinda
| defeats the whole selling point.
| kens wrote:
| There are multiple comments that double quotes to force exact
| matches don't work anymore on Google. But I'm puzzled because I
| use quotes all the time to find really, really obscure documents
| and never have problems. Are different people getting different
| results, or are people messing up somehow, or am I just lucky?
| empiko wrote:
| Not sure how is this related to the SW development, this is just
| a general set of Google keywords. I might sound like an old fart,
| but I feel like it is much more helpful to learn your way around
| the docs as a developer. I regularly see people googling all
| kinds of basic language knowledge that can be found in
| documentation. However, googling might lead to outdated or
| incorrect information, especially when people just copy the first
| result from Stack Overflow. My advice for the junior Python
| programmers is to learn using the `help` keyword and python
| console to quickly check how things work.
| 8note wrote:
| I find documentation tends to not tell you about alternative
| ways to do something similar.
|
| You can't find the right way to do something until you've read
| most of the docs, vs finding the way people do it by examples
| is quick.
|
| I don't need to learn how to write a novel to order lunch in a
| new labguage
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That depends on the framework and docs. I just finished a
| project where the docs are actually decent. But for a
| particular feature it was smeared across 40 different pages in
| random snippets. It was not like this was some obscure feature
| either it was one advertised to work 'out of the box'.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| The problem is that each documentation has its own search
| function, more or less efficient, each with its own quirks.
| Search engines are much better at finding information and they
| provide a consistent UI. You can search "php array sort", or
| "python array sort" and you'll get a link to the relevant page
| of the documentation.
|
| In comparison if I search for "array sort" in the Python doc
| directly, the first result is about "bisect" (vaguely related
| but too specific) and the second about "ctypes" (unrelated),
| the third is "Programming FAQ" (unrelated). Not one result is
| the generic "Sorting HOW TO" page, which Google links to first,
| and which is the most useful when you want to learn about
| sorting in Python.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This works until you find yourself developing in an environment
| that moves so quickly that any given archive of docs you have
| is out of date within a week.
|
| Excellent advice for languages, but might trip a developer up
| who's working with libraries (especially web development
| libraries, which release quickly).
| eliseumds wrote:
| Not only developers, literally anyone. I am shocked at the amount
| of time an average individual spends looking for solutions to
| everyday-life problems when I can find answers in seconds, it's
| crazy, and sad. I taught my family some more advanced queries and
| they're loving it.
| boyadjian wrote:
| I was waiting for this article for so long. Yes, it is
| incredible, how many people do not know how to use properly
| Google, they are asking questions on forums, while a simple
| search would give them the response
| zongabonga wrote:
| not for every developer. for every human. I've had so many
| questions asked to me about people's computers that they could
| google in 2 mins
| ksec wrote:
| >AND operator will return only results related to both terms:
|
| html AND css
|
| This is new to me. So what is the difference between searching
| _html css_ and _html AND css_?
| tiagod wrote:
| I just tried it. Searching html AND css shows pages with the
| words together (like "html & css" and "html, css, ...")
| ksec wrote:
| Would that be the same as "HTML CSS"?
| subjectsigma wrote:
| Somewhat of a hot take, but - I think using a search engine is a
| basic part of computer literacy and should be taught in schools.
| The number of times an older person has asked me a question I
| could just google is crazy.
|
| Probably the funniest anecdote: at my very first internship, an
| older engineer (50's) walked up to my desk and handed me a sheet
| of paper with a short description. He requested that I turn it
| into a SQL query and send him the results via email. I got the
| data back to him within 20 minutes and he was very impressed.
| Spoiler alert: I didn't know any SQL, I just copied and pasted
| something off of Stack Overflow. I think I was 19 years old at
| the time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I used to be a pro at using Alta Vista. Google was so much
| better, enabling me to get much better results without the tricks
| that I never mastered it to the same extent.
| jalk wrote:
| Same here. One could argue that the "arcane" query languages
| are just stepping stones towards our machines really
| understanding what we want. But I still cringe when I catch
| myself writing prose in the google search box "like some noob"
| not1ofU wrote:
| More? have at it: https://www.google.com/advanced_search
|
| https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
|
| "Google Dorking"
| workallday21 wrote:
| No, that's not it.
|
| You Google bubble is the most important asset.
|
| I was routinely ask to search the same thing as a colleague. And
| I regularly got better answers since I trained my bubble on
| technical queries. While the other person had more interests and
| Google returned varied results.
|
| So, if you get a hobby in landscaping, don't ruin your search
| bubble by polluting it with that.
| mraza007 wrote:
| Googling is an essential skill but What was it like back then
| when there was no Google at all?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In a past life, I was tasked with localization support for a
| product we were working on.
|
| One of the major challenges was localizing error messages. Since
| the system was heterogeneous and packed with legacy code, there
| wasn't really a good way to get the org to adopt a framework for
| localizing the error strings that myriad backends would emit. So
| any localization we'd do would end up being some form of
| "heuristic-match the plain English representation of the error
| (the only representation we could assume _every_ error supported)
| and transform it into a localized string. "
|
| But we eventually abandoned the task for a simple and very
| specific reason: someone brought us data that showed that most of
| our users figured out what to do about our error messages by
| querying StackOverflow, and we were therefore doing the users a
| disservice... Since SO can't language-translate one topic to
| another, we'd undesirably balkanize the aggregated knowledge
| space if we vended different users different error strings to
| plug in as search queries!
|
| So for maximum usability, we settled on the surprising solution
| where much of our UI was localized, except for the error
| messages, which were intentionally kept in English for maximum
| concentration of search results.
|
| If you want to avoid this problem in your org, my recommendation
| (from the position of pretending I was working in an ideal
| greenfield project with zero legacy code) would be to take the
| Microsoft-style approach of maintaining a global namespace of
| unique error code identifiers and emit those identifiers to the
| user along with ther plain-language error description. It's ugly
| and "computer-y," so you might get pushback from your UX team,
| but if you're going to support multiple languages, it provides a
| hook for services like StackOverflow (and other fora) to
| aggregate knowledge of an error across different human languages
| via a language-agnostic representation. At least until
| StackOverflow solves the hard problem of translating search
| queries so it can vend answers in a language-agnostic way, and
| I'm not going to hold my breath on that happening.
| justpw wrote:
| We've actually been working on an app for a while now to make
| Googling a lot more productive. It's not publicly available in
| the Chrome store yet, but you can access the unlisted version
| here:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waldo-%E2%80%93-se...
|
| It has some neat features like the ability to search _within_ the
| full text of your Google results, without ever leaving the page.
|
| Would love feedback from anyone who's interested in this topic!
| anoplus wrote:
| Web searching is one of the most important skills for everyone.
| The world today seems to me like a place with abundance of tools.
| More tools than one can imagine. Seems like the frontier
| separating one from solving any problem, is search. Search for
| the right tools that surely exist. So tool-searching tool would
| be a heck of a tool
| marcodiego wrote:
| After frontend/backend engineers, we see the rise of the full
| stack..overflow developer.
| glintik wrote:
| Googling, stackoverflowing and copypasting.
| harryvederci wrote:
| For those who aren't aware: Google is a lesser-known competitor
| of the recommended search engine DuckDuckGo.
| alessioalex wrote:
| People could just duck for 'google' to find out about it.
| eitland wrote:
| Brilliant! You put a big smile on my Friday face :-)
| npteljes wrote:
| It's the official terminology! Hover over the duck on their
| minimal start page:
|
| https://start.duckduckgo.com/
| not2b wrote:
| I recall that Google turned off filetype:mp3 at the height of the
| Napster / Limeware days to stop music sharing. It looks like it
| is ignored still.
| niels_bom wrote:
| Can the title be updated? This is more "10 tips for using
| Google". It says nothing about why it's an important skill for
| developers.
| mlejva wrote:
| Given what the post is about, I wanted to share what my friend
| and I are working on.
|
| It's an app called Devbook [0].
|
| Our goal is to build a search engine for developers. Currently,
| it allows you to search Stack Overflow and certain documentation.
| It's fully controllable using just a keyboard and completely free
| to use. It works in a way that you don't have to leave your
| coding editor.
|
| [0] https://usedevbook.com
| OnionBlender wrote:
| Why is it an app instead of a website?
|
| How do you make money? Your privacy policy mentions serving ads
| but your website doesn't show ads in any of the screenshots.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| This is only true really for younger developers who haven't
| understood the value of RTFM for software. Web search is less
| valuable to me as I get older due to experience. It is more
| valuable to those that don't have experience and want a
| playground to say: "if I do this, how can I do it, who else has
| done it?"
|
| A good example is if I ask a developer to write a MITM proxy
| server. You can search all day how to write one and you'll find a
| few projects on Github. However not a lot of info on the whys and
| whats. This is because no one wants the responsibility of their
| work being used in an attack. To get all the whys and whats you
| need to read documentation for the protocols and language you're
| using. Otherwise you will end up with a pretty hack-y solution.
|
| Because there is no stackoverflow on this, a younger developer
| would spend the greater part of 3 months understanding something
| simpler than it appears to be.
|
| Search hasn't made me a better developer so it's importance is
| minimal. Best practices have made me a better developer.
| Searching for solutions is not a best practice.
| deeg wrote:
| I'm an older developer and I google constantly. I deal with
| Java, Typescript, Scala, Ruby, Python, and bash on a regular
| basis and sometimes I forget the syntax or method for an
| operation. I can usually find it within seconds.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| I see older developers do it too.
|
| And which sites do you find this information on. Is it in the
| documentation? Wouldn't it be quicker to just know what docs
| will tell you that info each time instead of searching for
| "Java function signature" or "JS pass-by-value" and going to
| the same place. You're welcome to continuously search for
| stuff if that workflow is useful to you, but it's not very
| efficient.
| deeg wrote:
| I have hotkeys and chrome/firefox extensions to make it
| very fast to start and navigate a Google search. I don't
| have to remember all the different docs; I can use the same
| key-based workflow for all my searches.
|
| Over time I've gotten a feel for what sites have better
| answers for different questions. E.g. StackOverflow is
| great for explicit syntax questions because the answer is
| targeted to the question, unlike documentation which is
| trying to explain the whole syntax.
| tiagod wrote:
| Honestly, the documentation builtin search engine is
| usually way worse than google's. If I type something like
| "python 3.4 queue docs" I'm at the right docs page for that
| exact module and version in seconds.
| t-writescode wrote:
| How do you find the docs? Do you just keep a giant list of
| bookmarks for every project and sdk you might use? Or, do
| you Google the docs?
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Yes I keep bookmarks or often document the links in my
| brief of the project. Or I've used the links so much I
| know the site path to get to a doc.
|
| You're trying to find a hole in my logic, but you're
| ignoring what I'm saying:
|
| Searching the web isn't an important skill, just as going
| to the library to research isn't an important skill. The
| skill is reading, research, and organizing research
| itself. Google just makes it easy to be lazy about
| research and gives you the impression that with a few
| keywords, the research is organized for you.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > You're trying to find a hole in my logic, but you're
| ignoring what I'm saying
|
| I think you're ignoring what everyone else is saying and
| that is that Googling is not about Googling, it's just a
| tool for researching. It's not all about Googling some
| random blog post about how to manage cache invalidation,
| it's shorthand of knowing how to use search engines to
| get you to the right page, documentation, scholarly
| article or yes, random blog, about cache invalidation.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| ...that's what I'm saying.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| You're right that the real skill is not googling, but it
| seems like you're doing the same thing as everyone else.
| You don't have all the syntax and functions memorized, so
| you have to look things up occasionally, ya? You just
| skip Google and go straight to the docs. Googling is so
| quick though, any efficiency lost over clicking a few
| links seems minimal and not worth arguing about.
| aastronaut wrote:
| DDG might has a helpful !bang[0] available or zeal[1] (or
| dash[2] for macOS) can also be of help
|
| [0]: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=
|
| [1]: https://zealdocs.org/
|
| [2]: https://kapeli.com/dash
| Graffur wrote:
| Disagree completely. So much documentation is written poorly
| and will lead to confused implementations.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Sure, but poorly written documentation isn't what I'm talking
| about. For every bit of poorly written documentation there's
| probably already a tool with great documentation that's been
| doing it better for much longer than whatever you may be
| working on.
|
| Returning to my MITM proxy example, there is a python tool
| already called `mitmproxy`. A search will tell you that but
| the site will tell you how to use it. A quick search on how
| to use it will bring up too many resources with the actual
| documentation not really ranked as the top result. Even
| though it should be, it could reinforce stackoverflowing
| everything. Constantly using dated secondhand advice is not
| ideal in my opinion.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I go for the man page first, then to a book on the language, then
| to the web. I work with many people (who are by far my senior)
| who never never check man pages and never search the web but go
| around bugging others for very simple things. Just this week I
| was asked how to find and replace text in a document and told to
| email them instructions.
|
| This can be rephrased more generally: Effectively utilizing
| available sources of information is one of the most important
| skills for every engineer.
| maxbaines wrote:
| A useful cue sheet thank you.
| mdenic wrote:
| My pleasure. What tip did you like the most?
| beirut_bootleg wrote:
| What's often overlooked and omitted from this sort of guide is a
| person's ability to identify the trustworthiness and usefulness
| of a website that shows up in search results. It's not enough to
| juggle operands and search hacks. You also need to know which
| result to click.
|
| Another commenter suggested just searching for your error
| message. Try searching for "cannot read property of undefined"
| and scroll through the results. There are dozens of dodgy domains
| like asdfsdf.cornelius714.site that are just scrapes of
| stackoverflow or other forums.
| avs733 wrote:
| The academic and scholarly field you are referencing in your
| first paragraph is referred to as "information literacy"
|
| We're looking at this and students generally we look for the
| number of stages that need to be completed:
|
| Identification of the need for new information
|
| Searching and strategies for finding the needed information.
|
| Assessment of the usefulness of the information
|
| Evaluation of the credibility of the information
|
| Use of the information to progress a project forward
|
| Reflection on the process and identification of opportunities
| for improvement
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| That's a nice concise list. Even moreso: "You can think of
| information literacy as having five components: identify,
| find, evaluate, apply, and acknowledge sources of
| information" - via https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/resear
| chfoundations/info...
| avs733 wrote:
| Yup!
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Totally, and even on a good website, the real best answer isn't
| always obvious. I feel like on 30% of answers on StackOverflow
| the highlighted answer is either flat-out incorrect or out of
| date by 10 years and one of the answers further down will have
| 10x the upvotes and be more correct.
|
| And then of course there's always the problem of asking the
| wrong question. Like searching "how to read string between
| nested brackets" or something, when really the person is just
| trying to parse JSON but isn't aware of what JSON is.
| smoe wrote:
| For me those google hacks seem a bit of micro optimization. I
| use some and there are helpful, but more importantly are things
| like what sources are trustworthy, how to read error messages
| and stacktraces, being able to formulate your problem, etc.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I buy a lot of obscure stuff off ebay. Mostly old computers /
| engineering equipment build for a specific purpose.
|
| Because of this, i normally try to google around for the
| product to see if I can get some information or a manual on it
| so I don't end up with something next to useless because I
| can't figure out how to use it. Unfortunately a lot of the time
| I get these sort of sites that are basically just archives of
| previous or current ebay listings.
|
| Even weirder, I'll get some really strange URLS (I swear one or
| two I've found before didn't even look like the TLD's were
| real). The text below the link will often look like a keyword
| dump that just happens to have what I typed in plus all sorts
| of other random words and such. Clicking on them usually just
| leads to an unresolved link.
| bvogelzang wrote:
| While not nearly as discoverable or convenient there _is_ some
| google UI built around a few of these.
|
| 1. Click the "Tools" link just under the search button and you
| get options for restricting your search to a specific time range
| and making it an exact match.
|
| 2. If a term isn't included in a result sometimes Google will
| show "Missing: <search term> | Must include: <search term>" just
| under the entry
| enricozb wrote:
| I was on a 6+ hr plane ride over open water and therefore had no
| internet. I had my laptop and some work I wanted to complete, and
| it was an enlightening experience trying to program without
| internet connectivity.
|
| Reading local docs, perusing man pages, or just trying to deduce
| stuff alone gives a lot of deep understanding of some of the
| tools available to you.
|
| Hot take: taking code form online tutorials is faster to get
| something working but can lead to low understanding & bad code.
| Trying to learn things alone is a very rewarding way to
| _supplement_ learning and I recommend people try it sometime.
| [deleted]
| NaN1352 wrote:
| Didn't Google disable the "exact match" quoted search a while
| ago?
| joncp wrote:
| I suspect that testing job candidates for Google-fu would be much
| more productive that trying to find out whether they remember off
| the top of their head how some obscure algorithm works.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| To abstract it a bit more - the core skill is being able to learn
| search engine syntax and search operators. Much in the same way
| that learning regex can be incredibly rewarding.
|
| I've (unfortunately) met senior managers that equate googling
| with incompetence, because they've assumed that coders who rely
| too much on google (or other search engines) simply can't or
| don't want to learn languages enough to do stuff by memory.
|
| But, it's just a tool, like any other. I've worked with people
| that simply could not look up things, and would grind to a halt
| if they could not find any clues in their regular literature.
| lanstin wrote:
| One of the things to teach new people is when to try an
| experiment and when to Google. You need something (error msg
| whatever) specific enough to Google.
| CivBase wrote:
| > because they've assumed that coders who rely too much on
| google (or other search engines) simply can't or don't want to
| learn languages enough to do stuff by memory.
|
| How do these people expect developers to learn if not by
| searching for knowledge? There's a big difference between
| searching for information and blindly copy-pasting solutions
| from Stack Overflow.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I've worked with older engineers that only used manuals / man
| pages, but with that said, they are part of a small minority
| these days. But with age / seniority, they're often in senior
| positions.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| It is googling in this generation, might be different for the
| next generation.
|
| The core skill is to know how to acquire information and filter
| the noise from the signal.
|
| Today yesterday it was the user manual, today its google,
| tomorrow its stackoverflow. And beyond that, who knows !
| bmcahren wrote:
| Dinosaur warning.
|
| In 1995/1996 when the internet for me was just a source for
| entertainment and intrigue - we had a Microsoft employee come
| visit our school after they installed curriculum and computers
| under some kind of grant program.
|
| One of the most important points he emphasized was that by the
| time we grow up, the most important skill we will have is the
| ability to find and vet the source of information online using
| search engines. At the time dog pile and altavista were the tools
| of choice - Google did not yet exist.
|
| He said something else similar to "You won't need to rote memory,
| you'll just be able to reference anything and everything online".
| It felt like this man knew Wikipedia was coming.
|
| Using these guiding principles I definitely became the developer
| I am today.
| alexjray wrote:
| I was one of the first few cohorts at the first "coding bootcamp"
| by Shereef Bishay called Dev Bootcamp.
|
| This was the first skill they taught us and they told us the
| exact same thing.
|
| "You are in the business of learning, learning fast is going to
| be your greatest skill."
|
| Another insightful principal that I am reminded of often.
|
| "Businesses rarely fail because of a specific technical hurdle,
| more commonly they fail because the team fails."
|
| This was back in 2013, he was spot on with almost everything he
| taught us.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| When I started my professional career in 2000, Google was my
| secret weapon. It's also one of the things that kept in the
| areas where I've specialized, as my personal ability to find
| information on the internet is much better than dealing with
| intra-corporate dreck.
| alexjray wrote:
| It's 100% a competitive edge to be able to adopt new
| technology faster than others. "The future is here it's just
| not widely distributed yet". Kudos to you for recognize that
| early on.
|
| It's funny that hiring for this skill it still uncommon.
| amelius wrote:
| Grep is one of the most important tools for every developer.
| mdenic wrote:
| Two more tips added to the article. `before` and `after`
| operators.
|
| If you know any other tips & tricks, send me a DM on twitter
| @denicmarko. DMs open.
| [deleted]
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Back before Google, developers actually had to know what they
| were doing. Most kept textbooks on their bookshelves and cheat-
| sheets in their notebooks.
|
| I've done a lot of work in air-gapped secure facilities where no
| Internet is available. Whenever we get a new-hire, they must
| adapt to not having Google as an instant resource. About half of
| them cannot cope, and they move on within a few months. The half
| that stay actually become much more competent because they no
| longer use Google as a crutch.
| craftinator wrote:
| And back before then, the developers were REALLY hardcore,
| having stacks of cuniform etched clay tablets strewn about
| their caves. Occasionally a stack was knocked over, and a
| developer was crushed. Yes, development has become not only
| easier over the years, but safer as well.
| mbostleman wrote:
| >>Most kept textbooks on their bookshelves and cheat-sheets in
| their notebooks.>>
|
| Which is the same thing as Google, only exponentially smaller
| and slower.
| bradstewart wrote:
| I do all of the above. I can cope without it, but I don't
| consider Google a crutch. Why not use every tool at your
| disposal?
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Before google vendors supplied printed documentation.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Also, more of your software was likely to be from a vendor,
| not FOSS you paid $0 for. That means phone or even in-person
| support, in addition to a real manual, for stuff like your
| IDE, OS, and compiler.
|
| I dunno about everyone else, but a lot of my Googling that
| couldn't be replaced by a simple reference manual for the
| language(s) I'm using is _environment bullshit_. It 's a
| result of using a giant, complex, mostly-free build &
| deployment toolchain held together by duct tape. It's because
| in a given day I might interact with _dozens_ of programs,
| services, config tools, and daemons, all in a constant state
| of flux, and for many of which I have no paid support
| channel. A good percentage of my Googling is just confirming
| or disconfirming that the thing I 'm using is actually broken
| ( _per se_ or in its interaction, at version X, with version
| Y of some other thing) in some way that it appears to be
| broken. This kind of stuff is _only_ documented in bug
| trackers and forum (Stackoverflow) posts.
|
| If you're developing mainframe software in 1985, or a Turbo
| Pascal desktop program in 1995, that's a whole different
| story. Slower-moving, fewer pieces, and you've got someone to
| call (because you're paying them, or you already paid them
| and they want to keep your future business) for damn near
| every piece of hardware or software you use every day.
| gitowiec wrote:
| I agree with you. You are first person among commenters
| here that see this. Using free software is hard. There is a
| little of packages well documented. Plenty of packages has
| multiple versions not compatible with themselves. Sometimes
| reading documentations reveals that package API is not
| providing. Among worst things is minimum reproducible
| repository when one is working on a proprietary software
| based on Foss. I never could prepare such example to show
| reported bug because I could not share code or the bug
| related on such big part of code that it was impossible to
| me. That is why I really start to hate JavaScript
| environment and the business model based on opensource...
| If owner has no money to buy ready solutions it's gets hard
| after few years of development to be content of code base
| one is developing (that is how I feel now, and I'm looking
| for another job)
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I started programming before Google but honestly don't see a
| huge difference. The type of programming I did in 90s (windows
| networking stuff) was much simpler to grasp than the
| programming I do today. Back then you could get one out of 100
| error codes when dealing with sockets, now I can get a billion
| error code and that's before node has even loaded a file from
| disk.
| bingdig wrote:
| I've noticed filetype:pdf no longer really works - tons of sites
| that require you to sign up for an account before seeing the
| file. Used to be a great method to find pdfs of textbooks / other
| resources.
| Zenst wrote:
| I'll take this further - being able to frame and define a
| question well enough to get the right answer is a key skill in
| many walks of life.
| lanstin wrote:
| A lot of it comes down to learn vocabulary quickly. You get
| much better Google results when you use the argot of the people
| that know the answers. Don't say boilerplate code say design
| patterns. Don't say function for terraform say terraform
| module. If you are searching for Tesla related stuff, use the
| words that are disproportionately popular with Tesla drivers.
|
| I also notice Google is great for searches on stuff they care
| about. R Lang, go Lang Python, fantastic. It as much with
| things they don't care about.
| tyingq wrote:
| The article is missing several operators that are useful. Like
| inurl:, intitle:, allintitle:, etc.
|
| The "AROUND" proximity search is neat as well, especially for
| words with dual meaning. like:
|
| bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu
|
| Finds "bootstrap" within 6 words of "cpu", which culls out most
| (not all) of the unwanted results about the bootstrap js library.
|
| This article seems to cover most of the ones I'm aware of:
| https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
|
| Edit: Changed around(6) to AROUND(6). Apparently the lowercase
| version doesn't work, as it's highlighting the word "around" in
| the results.
| b215826 wrote:
| The inurl: keyword is extremely useful when combined with the
| site: keyword, e.g.,
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+inurl:progra...
|
| This would pull up results for "Vim tutorial" from the
| /r/programming subreddit. Of course, there are better ways to
| search by subreddit, but using site: and inurl: is the most
| website-agnostic way to narrow down results. Both these
| keywords also work on DuckDuckGo.
|
| I also often use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" keyword "\" on
| DuckDuckGo, e.g., to search for lyrics
|
| https://www.duckduckgo.com/?q=\rebecca+black+friday+lyrics
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| You can just do site:reddit.com/r/programming :)
| orf wrote:
| The first two results for "bootstrap AROUND(6) cpu" are about
| bootstrap though.
|
| "bootstrap cpu" gives far higher quality results.
| tyingq wrote:
| Yes, it's a difficult term. Even "bootstrap compiler" returns
| JS library results. I'm not claiming my example was the best
| one for demonstrating AROUND(N).
| discreteevent wrote:
| This used to be in Altavista but I think it was NEAR. It was
| even more useful then when the default algorithms weren't
| great.
| eitland wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > "search term"
|
| > Force an exact-match search. Use this to refine results for
| ambiguous searches, or to exclude synonyms when searching for
| single words.
|
| Author claimed they tested all of the operators, but this one
| in particular I can confirm haven't worked reliably for me for
| over a decade and across a number of machines and accounts.
|
| Some times it can be traced down to things like me searching
| for "foo bar" and Google thinking
|
| > He said _foo_. Bar immediately replied [...]
|
| is a valid match which is _kind of_ understandable.
|
| But most of the time I can't really see why the page shows up
| at all. No trace when searching in the page nor in the page
| source.
| elondaits wrote:
| Try opening the "Search tools" menu in the results page and
| selecting "Verbatim"... I think that makes "literal" searches
| work, because otherwise Google uses synonyms and language
| analysis to attempt to match your search to results.
| tyingq wrote:
| The query parameter google adds for verbatim matches is
| tbs=li, so you can append that to the url, like
| https://www.google.com/search?q="somestring"&tbs=li
|
| Some other uses of "tbs":
| https://stenevang.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/google-
| advanced-p...
| eitland wrote:
| That too has consistently failed between 2007 and late
| 2020.
|
| Now it just fails inconsistently (i.e. it sometimes works).
| vram22 wrote:
| Google the company, runs on an algorithm of arbitrary
| complexity.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I saw this a few days ago on the front page of HN. Thought it
| was pretty good. https://www.gwern.net/Search
| phreack wrote:
| Sadly, every time I try to get technical with these when I'm
| trying to Google with precision, after two or three searches I
| start getting blocked by really hard Captchas, and messages
| saying I might be either a bot or a hacker. It's really
| annoying.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Obviously a human user would never use such cryptic and
| complex search terms. /s
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I didn't know about AROUND(N), thanks.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Wow had no idea most of these operators existed. Thanks for
| sharing (and to the original post too, I didn't know a couple
| of those e.g. before:)
| sharken wrote:
| Same here, thought I was a master of Googling already, but
| good to learn something new.
| blakesterz wrote:
| I've found the "around" proximity search to be one of the most
| useful, if not THE most useful operators. It's SUPER useful if
| you're looking for something you just know someone must've
| already posted somewhere but you just can't find it!
|
| It always reminds me of learning how to search databases back
| in the 90s when you had to pay by the minute and you really
| needed to know all the operators and how to use them! Old
| school librarian skills :-)
| serial_dev wrote:
| Googling is important, and I hear it everywhere, but in my
| opinion "deep work", learning the basics, and focus is just as
| important.
|
| You can't _google_ yourself out of every situation. You must be
| willing to dive deep into a topic, read a lot, think and
| understand things well.
|
| What _googling_ often means is that you just open on the top 10
| hits, scroll through, read two paragraphs, and if the solution is
| not immediately clear, you go to the next page...
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Right. Often I find myself moving away from pages that actually
| have the content that I need. I just have not read them fully
| or actually understood the information.
|
| Googling is part of the skill, actually digging into results is
| another one that is just as valuable.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > You can't google yourself out of every situation.
|
| I attended a user group presentation on Hadoop a while back
| (back when Hadoop was pretty new) and the guy giving the
| presentation was talking about how difficult troubleshooting
| was. One woman in the front said, "but whenever there's a
| problem, why don't you just google the error message?" The
| presenter (and most of us in the audience) were struck by the
| horrifying realization that not only had she never had to
| resolve a problem that "googling the error message" couldn't
| fix, it _literally didn 't occur to her that that could
| happen_. (And yes, she was a project manager).
| okareaman wrote:
| My first job was writing 68000 asm for the yet to be released
| Macintosh. I had a list of opcodes and a register list for the
| chip. I had sparse, unfinished documentation of the Mac ROM. You
| will never hear me complain about developers using search engines
| to help them code.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Do you ever get nostalgic for it?
|
| Most of my programming career has been in Python/JS and as I've
| gotten a bit older, I've found bare metal computing a very
| rewarding hobby. I'm curious if - having done this to pay the
| bills as opposed to noodling around - you miss that era?
| okareaman wrote:
| Not really. I like asm coding but it gets tedious on large
| projects and I don't miss dealing with bugs that bring the
| whole machine down.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| This is more useful than I thought it was going to be. Specially
| the "-" for exclusion is new to me, and I can recollect a few
| times where that would have been handy to know.
| Flex247A wrote:
| Especially excluding Pinterest results while searching for
| images ;)
| intergalplan wrote:
| Is there a animated gif search anywhere that excludes results
| that don't actually give you a damn gif when you follow the
| link? Giphy and friends have made it impossible to find
| actual gifs.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| It's funny how this knowledge seems to get lost these days
| because they try to make the interface less complex. I remember
| these modifiers supported by the most common search engines
| were even discussed in magazines aimed at children here in the
| early 2000s! These days it's almost expert knowledge...
| antirez wrote:
| It is no longer possible to use Google well. Once it searched
| _strictly_ the pages that contained all the words you listed:
| after some practice, you were able to imagine what a page with
| the thing you were searching for could contain: that was really a
| superpower, you could find things that others really had issues
| finding, and then you could tell other people how to do it. But
| Google reasons about 90% of users, not 10%. So ti started to
| introduce semantical inspection of the query. This made many
| people able to find things more easily, but the top users were
| left in pain: in some way even using the operators to force
| matches, it is no longer possible to force google to really do
| what it did before, find pages having all the listed words,
| exactly.
| net_greybeard wrote:
| Google is okay for research on how other people have achieved
| something. But generally these days I am of the opinion it just
| teaches you bad habits.
|
| I really wish people would just read the docs instead of just
| googling. I am working on a large typescript solution and almost
| every error in the application is due to the original developers
| not reading the docs and instead just googling stuff from stack
| overflow.
|
| Also I am against the promotion of google generally. The search
| engine isn't that much better than Duck Duck Go anymore
| (especially for dev stuff). Also we should all know the problems
| with Google's defacto monopoly on search.
| xxpor wrote:
| Google/DDG is usually the fastest way to find the docs.
| Documentation sites are usually terrible for discovery.
| net_greybeard wrote:
| It is fine for finding the docs. However people use it to
| find quick, frequently out of date or just wrong solutions on
| the net.
|
| For example. If you are using the babel compiler and its
| plugins you will fine lots of answers that are wrong on Stack
| overflow because they were written when Babel 6 was the major
| version was popular. Whereas reading the docs (the doc site
| is quite good IMO) will get you the correct answer every time
| but comes much lower in search results. Using the babel 6
| suggestions can lead you to into some sort of NPM hell.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I agree on the first point, allocating time to design the
| expected outcome is also key.
|
| But on the second point, I find myself having to use the g!
| Operator of ddg to get the result I need.
|
| Recently it was looking for a workaround I knew existed for a
| documented defect. ( weirdly not documented on the bug tracker
| of the library ... go figure )
|
| Google gave me the result, Duck Duck go was serving me the doc
| or the bug tracker.
|
| Hmm. Actually maybe Google just remembered that from my
| previous search.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > I really wish people would just read the docs instead of just
| googling. I am working on a large typescript solution and
| almost every error in the application is due to the original
| developers not reading the docs and instead just googling stuff
| from stack overflow.
|
| It's a bit more complicated than that. I do read the docs, but
| using the web is essential for me, for a few reasons:
|
| - nowadays, a dev doesn't work on an area that can be included
| in a single book; one touches several different frameworks, and
| reading that docs for all of them can be just unfeasible
|
| - the docs may not be good; you may be surprised that even the
| Linux API doc can be really bad
|
| - there may be issues that require workarounds that are not
| described in the docs
|
| - best practices may not be obvious even when reading the docs
|
| - one can't assume that in a big doc, it's obvious where the
| solution for a problem is, which may force to read way more
| than expected
|
| I think a dev can "google more than RTFM'ing" and still produce
| a good solution, if they intend to - that is, to process the
| information rather than blindly copy/pasting.
|
| Thinking about it, the major problem seem to me unprocessed
| copy/paste, rather than "googling instead of RTFM'ing".
| js8 wrote:
| No, it's actually pretty simple. Software industry faces the
| similar problem that journalism faces, we increasingly skip
| on quality, in a race to the bottom. We hope to fix this by
| technology, but in the end we just create more work for
| ourselves.
|
| > nowadays, a dev doesn't work on an area that can be
| included in a single book
|
| Which is terrible because it means that there is less
| specialization and its benefits for productivity.
|
| > the docs may not be good
|
| You get what you pay for.
|
| > there may be issues that require workarounds that are not
| described in the docs
|
| You get what you pay for.
|
| > best practices may not be obvious even when reading the
| docs
|
| You get what you pay for.
|
| Don't get me wrong, OSS is amazing, but in commercial
| software, you also pay for support & documentation. But since
| nobody wants to pay for the software anymore, we end up with
| using Google instead of reading the documentation. And this
| becomes self-fulfilling prophecy, why provide good
| documentation if nobody is gonna read it?
|
| It would be ridiculous if somebody wrote an article stating
| that "googling it" is the most important skill for a
| mechanical engineer or a doctor. But for software
| engineering, it is acceptable. Looks like software
| engineering is becoming less and less about engineering every
| day.
|
| Addendum: SW developers also seem to write less, comments or
| other human-readable explanations. This might also contribute
| to less appreciation of good SW documentation, and
| contributes to a worrying trend of being less literate.
| net_greybeard wrote:
| > best practices may not be obvious even when reading the
| docs
|
| I am right now working on a project because of the googling
| stuff has led to the worst practices at the moment. I have
| worked on many projects where people haven't bothered reading
| the docs and I have seen the same pattern for over a decade.
|
| Whereas if they had read the docs the best practices would
| have been immediately apparent. So that argument hold no
| water with me.
|
| > one can't assume that in a big doc, it's obvious where the
| solution for a problem is, which may force to read way more
| than expected
|
| I want people reading more. Which was part of my overall
| point. People don't read enough. They go for the quick
| solution (which is copy and paste from stack overflow)
| produce something which is usually quite bad and then you
| normally have to redo that work because the moment you try to
| change something (due to changing requirements) the whole
| thing falls to pieces.
|
| I've been guilty of it too. It is a bad habit that is
| produced through laziness.
|
| I literally wrote docs at a previous place and people kept on
| asking for help on IM. I wrote the document so I wouldn't
| have to answer the same questions many times. People getting
| into bad habits and not looking for or writing docs literally
| causes a hell of a lot more issues that you would see at
| first glance.
|
| > Thinking about it, the major problem seem to me unprocessed
| copy/paste, rather than "googling instead of RTFM'ing".
|
| I would rather have a unprocessed copy and paste then what
| you get in reality which is a "copy pasta". There are minor
| bits changed which make it difficult to recognise where it
| may have originally come from, which makes it difficult to
| know the original developer's intent.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Reading the docs...
|
| I cannot offer that to the users of my own docs, because I know
| how outdated it was...
| falcolas wrote:
| Sounds like a problem...
|
| For you.
|
| If you can't keep your docs up to date, how up to date do you
| think Google's results are?
| v8dev123 wrote:
| DDG uses Bing.
| rajasimon wrote:
| I was thought about creating a documentation search engine for
| the everyday frameworks. It uses the natural language to match
| the pattern in the docs to give the best results immediately.
| logicslave wrote:
| I came here to say this. After so much experience, I just learn
| the technology. It saves so much time.
| lostcolony wrote:
| "Just read the docs" depends on how good the docs are, and how
| discoverable they are.
|
| For instance, searching for "Java read a file", I find a bunch
| of examples. And they mostly are good enough, call out when
| they aren't, and provide useful links.
|
| Meanwhile, navigating Oracle's website is a nightmare.
| https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/file.ht...
| exists, and is actually pretty helpful, but the only way I was
| able to find it was by Googling "oracle java read a file".
| Searching Oracle's own doc site (itself hard to find for a
| given version of Java) with the same string (i.e., 'read a
| file') turned up nothing useful (
| https://docs.oracle.com/search/?q=read+a+file&category=java&...
| )
| mywittyname wrote:
| A developer who is new to a technology absolutely needs to
| read the documents. No matter how good or bad, it's important
| because it probably tells you a lot of stuff you wouldn't
| learn on your own (or that someone else will teach you
| wrong).
|
| I do a lot of GCP work anymore, and the amount of devs who
| make service authentication way more complicated than it
| needs to be is really freaking high. It's clear that the
| people who kicked off the project are pulling blocks from SO
| rather than RTFM because the FM has a simple decision tree
| for how to use authentication. Reading through the docs could
| have saved these projects each hours of time, simplified
| deployment and reduced the security risks associated with
| passing around json auth tokens (or worse: checking them into
| VCS.
| madacol wrote:
| Cases where docs are not enough:
|
| - Beginners do not understand doc's jargon, or they need to
| learn too much stuffs to understand it that they'd rather
| quit. So they end up relying on third party
| sources/implementations
|
| - No English knowledge and no translations
| madacol wrote:
| I agree with the criticisms, my point is that there are
| many beginners in a state where the most rational or
| practical choice is to sacrifice quality by following
| third party resources.
|
| I have a spanish-speaking group where me and others teach
| beginners programming, and many of them cannot use the
| docs, whether because of a language barrier, or a lack of
| foundational knowledge, and all they care is to get
| things done, otherwise they'd get discouraged and abandon
| it before even starting
| bordercases wrote:
| - Tough luck - this is actually a trap for beginning
| learners so although there is wisdom in learning enough
| to get the job done, if they rather quit than progress in
| their knowledge, and the knowledge is foundational for
| much of their work, they are setting themselves up for
| long-term failure.
|
| - Fair point, English is still a lingua franca so over
| time this issue nils out.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Lacking ability to read books.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I'd be surprised if the documents for any sufficiently
| large project did not include a "Getting started" section
| designed for beginners.
|
| Everyone of your users will start off as a beginner, it
| behooves project creators to ensure that beginner
| documentation is great.
| oneplane wrote:
| On the other hand: if you are developing software, you're
| going to have to be able to at least read English, and if
| you don't understand the jargon, that just means that
| your starting point isn't just the docs, but also a
| jargon lookup.
|
| People generally just want to cut corners and 'be done
| with it' which simply results in lower quality.
| net_greybeard wrote:
| Obviously. If the docs are garbage then you are going to have
| to find alternatives. However these days devs have never had
| it better.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| _Laughs in shitty Oracle docs._
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ever heard of an high technology with durable storage longer
| than most digital mediums called books?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I've often found "read the docs" leaves you with too many
| options for many libraries. A lot of libraries have community
| preferences that aren't captured in the docs. If you pick the
| non-standard implementation, you may paint yourself into a
| corner with plugins and maintenance - even though the way you
| choose is completely sufficient.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Sometimes you have to read the docs
|
| "But the docs are poorly written" you say
|
| "But the docs aren't maintained well" you say
|
| Read the docs. Sometimes it isn't supposed to be easy. Or
| fun. Or fit together well. But that's the job.
|
| RTFM is the best technical advice I've been given and can
| give.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Most docs just give you the primitives but don't explain HOW TO
| DO SOMETHING. I can't even count how many times I am learning
| some new thing and I have to find a tutorial on medium to
| figure out how to get something to work because its either
| undocumented or you need inside knowledge.
| [deleted]
| spike021 wrote:
| As with anything, everyone has their own style of learning.
|
| Yes, a large portion of developers just copy/paste from SO.
| However, many people also use the results of what they find on
| Google to learn concepts that the actual docs for just aren't
| that good.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I wish I had the time to learn everything I copy from SO/SE.
|
| Sometimes when you need to get something done and you find
| something that works as is, it is easier to test it and move
| on to something more important.
|
| We don't have infinite time.
| username90 wrote:
| Often it is much faster to learn things properly and get it
| right rather than trying to figure out why the stuff you
| copy pasted doesn't work together.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Indeed, the older SO gets the less helpful it becomes. I'm not
| sure what they can do about it.
| calmchaos wrote:
| Agreed! By the way, with SearchMage WebExtension you can enhance
| google and other search engines so that you get useful features
| like easier navigation, easier filtering, search profiles,
| removal of spam domains, optional infinite scroll etc.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchmage/oldjnha...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/searchmage-search-e...
| mdenic wrote:
| Is this yours? Btw, what tip did you like the most?
| firefoxd wrote:
| This is great list, but what is the most important in search is
| not operators. It is context.
|
| Every time I work with students and they are stuck, I ask them to
| Google the issue. 9 out of 10 they will write something like: how
| to upload an image?
|
| Instead, they should first specify the context. Is it an issue on
| the front end? Are they looking for the correct input type for
| file upload? Or is it the php method to receive the file on the
| back end. Or is it in nodejs?
|
| Search engines cannot infer the correct context because there are
| hundreds of correct answers. So we have to specify:
|
| - nodejs file upload async (no need to talk to it like a human)
|
| - html file upload input type
|
| - php file upload tutorial
|
| Most likely, the answer will be in the first few links.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| that's basically how i look up non-existent terraform
| documentation "intext:google_pubsub_topic (site:github.com OR
| site:gist.github.com)"
| submeta wrote:
| There are so many devs who can't properly Google, but there are
| equally many devs who can't get a couple of books about a subject
| (that alone is a skill not many devs have mastered), dive into it
| and take the time to understand. Either they never learned how to
| properly read or they don't have the patience, and thus look for
| a shortcut.
|
| It's okay if you are familiar with a tech to look up how this or
| that can be solved idiomatically / differently / at all, but
| never taking the time to learn the basics (of Regexes, of Python,
| Ruby, Javascript and whatnot) will give you superficial knowledge
| where you can't assess a situation, go two steps on your own
| before you constantly consult stackoverflow.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Books feel like a really inefficient way to learn how to do a
| skill imo.
| nyx_ wrote:
| Yeah, absolutely. I've become so accustomed to the instant
| gratification loop of "how do I do this -> internet for 2
| minutes -> okay got it" that having to actually read papers or
| docs on something to build an understanding is a real slog for
| me lately. I think neural plasticity goes both ways and it's a
| skill that can be built up again, but getting yourself weaned
| off of immediate answers is pretty tough.
| username90 wrote:
| Work on problems that are too hard for Google to easily
| answer and you stop googling real quick.
| robben1234 wrote:
| Try to solve the problem described by the book or research
| using your Google skills and once you fail you'll appreciate
| the resource that gives more insight more.
|
| If you succeed, what's the point of reading the entire thing
| then? If it still has something distinct from what you
| already achieved go the the specific page and read that.
| kd913 wrote:
| So far the most useful thing I have found has been the bangs from
| duckduckgo.
|
| With it I can avoid an additional search and go directly search
| the place I want to look whether that is python docs, rust docs,
| Wikipedia, reddit or Amazon. Heck I can forward myself directly
| to google too.
|
| All of this with just a !w, !a, !python3, !rust, !g added to my
| query.
|
| I understand why google doesn't support this, largely because
| they want people to stay on the google page and be subject to
| ads.
|
| I just question the utility of showing advertisements for at
| least programming related queries where I think the direct to
| websites seems a lot more useful.
| treszkai wrote:
| You can drop the "3" from !python3, it has the same result.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html -
| all the bang operators on one page, in accessible form. (here
| is the code that builds the search page
| https://github.com/MoserMichael/duckduckbang )
| vemv wrote:
| I'd suggest to change the editorialized submission title, as it
| predisposes people to share opinions that can easily be unrelated
| to the article's contents in question.
| dang wrote:
| Changed now. Submitted title was "Googling is one of the most
| important skills for every developer". It wasn't exactly
| editorialized, since it's the first sentence of the article
| (which is often an ok fallback for an HN title) - but I agree
| with you that it's misleading here, and also still too baity.
| andrew_v4 wrote:
| Agreed - the article is tips and tricks to use google
| effectively, not an editorial about the value of googling
| v8dev123 wrote:
| Sometimes Stackoverflow own's search is better than Google.
| gropius wrote:
| I don't "google," I "web search." And I don't use big G as my
| initial, primary search engine.
|
| Using Google "like a pro" may have been a possibility in the past
| but they stopped being a reliable professional tool a long
| vulgarized time ago.
|
| These days Google serves up garbage search results for babies.
| jansan wrote:
| I always use google to search Stackoverflow, because
| Stackoverflow's search functionality sucks. Just add
| "site:stackoverflow.com" to your search.
|
| Example: "javascript split keep delimiters
| site:stackoverflow.com"
| thex10 wrote:
| after: is my favorite so far. Almost every search I do these days
| brings up results using very old versions of the JS/CSS libraries
| involved in my search, and adding "after:2019" or "after:2020"
| helps bring more relevant results.
| nikartix wrote:
| I think google does a great job of organizing information, that's
| why it's useful. As I've used google for as long as I had access
| to internet I've built up a mental network of things in the
| internet and also skills associated with finding reliable
| information in the web.
|
| Just knowing how to search something is not enough, knowing what
| to search is even more important and what links to follow.
|
| Google is like a huge personal notebook available to me so that I
| don't have to take notes and can look up easily when I forget
| something.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Googling used to be a developer super power but I don't think it
| is any longer. We've seen massive consolidation in the sources of
| information and google focuses on them, so (a) everyone can find
| the same answers with pretty vague queries, and (b) your odds of
| finding "that hidden gem" because you used a highly optimized
| query are dramatically lower.
|
| In the aggregate this is probably a good thing, but from one
| former google-strong developer it's diminished my competitive
| advantage.
| cute_boi wrote:
| For those who don't know about Google it is just like DuckDuckGo
| with ads and trackers.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| DuckDuckGo also has ads.
| b215826 wrote:
| That aren't personalized or track you.
| qyi wrote:
| > 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search
|
| Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes
| your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article
| written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of
| the time.
|
| Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a
| "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since
| 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search engine who has
| done this the longest. Google search right now is like one of
| those dinky websites from the early 2000s that follows all kinds
| of insane practices like blacklists and filters.
|
| What Google Search is trying to be is a thing you can ask
| questions and get an answer back. For example converting feet to
| inches, or where is Starbucks. I don't even understand why the
| niche (really, this is how academic research is done, but i guess
| you can just discount the entire web as an invalid soruce) of
| "searching for strings over a set of websites" is not even
| attempted to be filled. People are crazy.
| rcoveson wrote:
| I'm struck by the _profundity_ of this loss. It 's almost as
| bad as if something like archive.org were to just disappear.
| SaaS is so ephemeral. One day, you have access to a version of
| Google that works absurdly well. The next, it's gone forever.
|
| I used to use Google so much that it felt like a border collie
| in those dog competitions. I knew how it behaved, I had a bank
| of commands/searches that I had half-memorized and which I
| could use to restore knowledge that had been evicted from my
| cache. It repeatedly surprised and delighted me with how smart
| and loyal it was. Like a good dog.
|
| And then that dog got brain cancer. It doesn't know any
| commands anymore. All it can do is vomit up clickbait-y news
| stories from the last 4 years. And I'll never get to interact
| with the old one ever again. You can't archive.org a SaaS
| application.
| dereg wrote:
| It's really sad. There used to be a time when I'd try to
| recall a specific page on the internet and I'd be able to use
| a zillion search operators to narrow in to the page that I
| was looking for. Now, that's impossible.
|
| I've noticed search for everything kind of sucks now as every
| platform has tried to become curators.
| iagovar wrote:
| This. Sadly it works poorly in other search engines too. I have
| a bookmark folder with a bunch of search engines, and use it
| like that.
| de_nied wrote:
| Google also has verbatim search, which works a lot better than
| quotes, but still fails with some symbol keys.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yeah, it seems that you now have to go into Tools > All Results
| > Exact Match to get this behavior. Double quotes doesn't cut
| it anymore.
| narag wrote:
| Exactly. Google should get better at googling.
| docmars wrote:
| I believe Google is more concerned with combating the apparent
| world-ending risk of someone discovering misinformation and
| parsing that information themselves ( _gasp_ ), than providing
| a useful search engine to the majority who are using it with
| good intentions, as you described.
| markdown wrote:
| You jest but USA elected Donald Trump to lead them, proving
| once and for all that misinformation spread by the internet
| _is_ potentially world-ending.
|
| You jest but if a pandemic 100 times as deadly as COVID came
| upon us, anti-vaxxers and the misinformation they spread via
| the internet _could_ potentially end the world.
|
| You either education your people, or you have to control the
| information they receive.
|
| The GOP has long chosen to make Americans more stupid
| (privatisation of education, the teaching of fairy tales in
| the science classroom, etc) so that they can continue to be
| manipulated into voting for charlatans. As a result, the only
| way to keep the country from completely going off the rails
| on the backs of dumb fucks is to manipulate the information
| they receive... try and protect them from misinformation,
| disinformation, and lies.
| docmars wrote:
| I wholeheartedly disagree with just about everything you
| said (much of it is misinformation and/or hysterics), but I
| appreciate you sharing your thoughts. :)
| markdown wrote:
| I probably was a bit hysterical there, but I think the
| underlying point that an uneducated populace just can't
| cope in the modern world centered around information on
| the internet.
|
| I know someone I consider intelligent who started with
| one Joe Rogan video and a year later was a raving pro-
| Russia, pro-China, holocaust denying anti-vaxxer. Youtube
| took him from fun, reasonable guy who you'd love to have
| at a party to the bore who found a conspiracy in
| everything and who just oozed bile and anger at this new
| world that millennials had destroyed.
|
| If he couldn't fight the propaganda, your average person
| on the street can't. It's a recipe for disaster, and to
| my mind the only short term solution is to censor the
| propaganda.
|
| Of course over the long term, the only real solution is
| to create a smarter population who aren't just trained in
| arithmetic, but in logic and philosophy.
| [deleted]
| kqvamxurcagg wrote:
| Perhaps someone could add some clarity but isn't it true that
| Google has, over time, begun to ignore the specific operators?
| Double quotes used to work but I now find that Google ignores
| these. For me at least, this has made Google less useful over
| time.
| seph-reed wrote:
| "Googling" is a subset of "querying" or "searching"
|
| I know I'm being pedantic, but it's just free advertisement when
| we use a name brand to describe something instead of a brand-
| neutral word.
| 2snakes wrote:
| Amen!
| PopGreene wrote:
| I follow and sometimes advise on /r/learnpython. There are two
| types of questions on there that make me shake my head.
|
| 1. "How do I do this?" The question often that can be resolved
| with a search. This person would rather wait for an answer than
| do the work of a simple search.
|
| 2. "Will this work?" along with some snippet of code.
|
| I have to remind myself that they're often kids that have yet to
| learn how to learn. Still, these are basic skills (searching and
| experimenting) that should be taught as part of every HS
| programming class.
|
| Then I have the horrifying thought that the people asking these
| questions are adults that I will either have to work with, or
| worse, be managed by.
| lanstin wrote:
| That is a really interesting point. Experimentation could be
| taught. There are the various "REPL based dev" rants but
| experimenting is more general. Although the barriers to entry
| to each new piece of modern technology seem a little higher.
| Hello world in Python REPL is a bit easier than a hello world
| container in a k8s container. I often don't bother to try out
| new stuff when I first hear about it because generally the
| process of getting it to work in the trivial case is 90% of the
| effort and 90% of the googling
|
| Part of the things you learn to increase your power in various
| environments is how to achieve certain capabilities in certain
| environments. Now I know how to set up terraform modules to
| deploy services on VMs with zero downtime deploys, and plop in
| some lambdas for end to end monitoring with alerts going to the
| slack channel. I can implement all our new things we need to
| deploy without too much frame, I just can worry about the
| picture. It makes me correspondingly less interested in setting
| the same thing up on Mesos or EKS or whatever. But eventually
| you get calls to do some new thing three times and you have to
| respond.
|
| Fortunatey, we have people that can deploy helloworld in fifty
| different frameworks (but don't seem like they can actually
| write or debug complicated code). They are useful but it is a
| weird thing to master. All experiments and no new logic wrested
| into being to do things.
| dgudkov wrote:
| Can we have a GUI for that?
| tony-allan wrote:
| Also just Google any error messages (minus your specific bits)...
| k_sze wrote:
| That, and knowing how to ask questions on StackOverflow or in
| IRC/Discord/Slack/Matrix.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| Man, I really wish SO had a "Close question because answer is
| in the documentation" option. They'd see their traffic halve
| overnight.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's the other way as well, if a question gets
| asked/answered on SO, it may be a great addition to the
| documentation.
| Flex247A wrote:
| Sometimes searching StackOverflow is quicker than reading
| the documentation/manual.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| I didn't know about the wildcard (*) operator. That will come in
| handy.
|
| I also like to use the timeframe limiter under tools to narrow
| down to the past year, month, etc., to get more recent results.
| azhenley wrote:
| I agree! In fact, I recently wrote a blog post titled, "Can you
| make a basic web app without Googling? I can't". It got a bunch
| of discussion here too.
|
| Article:
| https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/webappwithoutgoogling.htm...
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25961420
| mellosouls wrote:
| Discussion on a far more comprehensive article (though perhaps
| aimed at more in-depth needs) the other day:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847596
|
| https://www.gwern.net/Search
| [deleted]
| badwolf wrote:
| Using search engines effectively is such a great, often
| overlooked skill. It's something that folks often think as a
| given, but being able to quickly find an answer or resource can
| appear as "techno voodoo" to some.
|
| I've tried to make a habit of not telling people "just Google
| it!" when they ask me a question, and instead "Let's Google it" -
| to open up for an opportunity to help someone try to find an
| answer by "asking" in a different way.
| mdenic wrote:
| Well said. What tip did you like the most?
| fireattack wrote:
| If date info is critical in your search, I suggest to use the
| Tools->Custom range instead of `before:`/`after:`.
|
| They are almost identical but if you use Tools one, it shows the
| date of each search results directly on listing, which is very
| helpful.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I remember when adding + to a keyword forced it to be present in
| the results. Then they changed that because of google+ to be
| keywords in double quotes.
|
| Now google completely ignores that. It seems like searching gets
| dumbed-down by the year
| marto1 wrote:
| And extremely ironically you won't see it as a requirement on a
| single job ad.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| These special characters always seem to clash with my desire to
| copy and paste an error message from the terminal and have google
| find it for me.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I know it was not the most important thing by a long shot, but
| having a named that is verbifiable was/is still handy. "Just
| google it". You can't do the same with other search tools. "Just
| bing it" is the closest, but "binging" is not only not an
| important skill, it's something they do on Netflix.
|
| Yahooing? Ducking? Dogpiling? Altavisting? Binging?
|
| The ability for the word 'google' to be transformed to multiple
| use cases still impresses me.
| orev wrote:
| When people started using "google" as a verb, there was the
| same reaction. You probably feel more comfortable with "google"
| just because you've been using it longer (and depending on your
| age, you may not remember a time before google).
| mgkimsal wrote:
| it's not just familiarity though - it was a word able to be
| verbified at the start. it didn't sound or feel _wrong_ -
| certainly 'different' or 'new' up front, but few tools have
| names that are this malleable up front.
| harryvederci wrote:
| "Searching"?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| sure, but google had the ability to be commoditized - people
| "google" even when they're just 'searching' (and the browser
| is set to default to DDG, for example). "googling=searching"
| for a sizable portion of the population, much like
| "kleenex=tissue" or "Xerox=copy" (back in the day).
|
| You could just say 'Xerox these reports' and people knew what
| you meant, even if your office had a Ricoh copier.
| lhnz wrote:
| Long-term, more important than Googling, is building a mental
| picture of 'who can be trusted to give solid advice or write
| great code'.
|
| Nowadays, I don't hit StackOverflow, but go to GitHub to look at
| what the best Software Engineers I know did to solve a problem.
| For each topic, there is somebody that comes to mind that I think
| is better than everybody else, and I look to them for direction.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| The GitHub Code Search feature is really useful. If I run into
| a weird problem that's somewhat outside "mainstream"
| programming (e.g. 2D Line Arrangements with CGAL), I'll often
| use Code Search to try to find repos that are using the API I'm
| using to see how they used it.
| lanstin wrote:
| Is that really better or faster than adding GitHub to your
| Google search terms? (Real question)
| tingletech wrote:
| I remember before google using altavista. And before the web,
| searching usenet news with WAIS.
| vxxzy wrote:
| It's not about knowing the information, it's about knowing
| how/where to find it AND how to apply it in a given situation.
| dkersten wrote:
| Just as I use StackOverflow less and less, I also use google
| (search in general) less and less for development work. Sure
| every so often I get a weird error and search for it, but I've
| been finding that less and less useful. A big part of it is that
| I don't really use any hyper popular frameworks and libraries so
| there just aren't many answers out there for what I do use. I've
| also grown accustomed to reading the language and library
| documentation and reference material, example code or the code
| I'm using itself.
|
| Recently, I've mainly been working on a niche Clojure project and
| a personal C++ game+engine project. For Clojure, I get along best
| with clojuredocs, the readme for whatever library I'm using and
| just reading the code. I only really found google/SO useful for
| Clojure in the early days when I was still learning it, but I've
| been writing Clojure for ten years now.
|
| For C++, I keep cppreference.org open and also the readme's for
| the libraries I use (mostly header only libraries) and ill look
| at the headers too. The only library I've really spent a lot of
| time googling is the Bullet physics engine (it's woefully
| underdocumented unless you're using the python bindings). Any
| time I've tried googling for error messages, I've found it less
| than useful so instead I guess I've just gotten better at trying
| to understand obscure clang errors (usually template errors).
| I've also needed some help doing more advanced things with the
| EnTT library, but the author is very responsive on github and
| discord.
|
| In my previous job, I was mainly working on automating various
| AWS service interaction with terraform and python and while I did
| occasionally google for things, I almost always ended back on the
| terraform and AWS official documentation pages anyway.
|
| I also learned to program at a time when my internet access was
| irregular, so relied on offline copies of documentation for all
| my needs. Maybe that helped me rely less on quick fix searches,
| although I definitely went through a phase of that some years
| ago.
|
| As for the article, besides quotes for exact matches, I don't
| think I've ever bothered with any of the other tips, in years if
| ever. Got on just fine without it ;-)
| ivanech wrote:
| +1 for clojuredocs. I'm at a company that uses Clojure now, and
| I've found that stackoverflow just isn't the place for Clojure,
| so I've been sticking to clojuredocs, which is great.
|
| For personal stuff, I finally started using manpages, and it's
| been great. Mostly very clear docs + convenient search with
| apropos.
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