I use Bing. Mostly for Bing Rewards, which essentially gives me a free Starbucks ~every month. But now I'm finding their search engine isn't that terrible.
Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
141–150 of 181 posts
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you, that's a helpful tip! I used to use many modifiers for my Google queries, but Google dropped support for many of them, and doesn't seem to document comprehensively what they actually support from day to day. I wish excluded keywords were the only frustration. Their index seems to have gotten considerably worse at dealing with any somewhat "long-tail" query. I'm not sure why. I suspect they've won the spam…
My favorite modifier removal: Currently, you can use - to exclude keywords. Once upon a time, you could use + to require a keyword... until Google+ came out, and + became how you would search for people's profiles. sigh
Bing still honors the + operator, thankfully. I find it occasionally useful.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#143For programmers that were coding before good search engines: what did you do when you wanted to look up an error, etc back then? Crack open a tome for the language? Just curious as I can't imagine it was easy.
I remember actually going to my local library and finding some detailed technical books (in my case DOS Interrupts I think), and reading a lot to find out WTF was going on.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#1441. Google if someone had the same problem and fixed it. 2. Hope you're using OSS software and simply browse the source to find answers. The second approach is a bit slower at first, but after you dismantled a bunch of repos it becomes natural, you get faster and the answers you find are more reliable.
Having done enough of the second approach, I find it hard to understand why people do the first -- why see what people wrote about what something does when you can just see what it does. Even man pages are some amount of here say, versus inspecting the code.
That said, I do web search some specific terms frequently to get to certain documentation that I trust, SMS search is the easiest way to get there consistently.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#145I often joke that my ability to formulate good Google queries is the single most important part of my software engineering skillset. Except, you know, I'm not really joking.
I'd love to learn this. If anyone has any good resources, please let me know!
I was about to say that you can really only learn this by experience, but I'll bet you'd be able to learn a lot by watching someone else work and listening to them talk about their thought process out loud.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much you remember is also correlated to how much you actually use certain things; it can be a good signal for whether you have practical experience with X. For some companies, it's what they need in a hire. For others it's OK to just ensure people have a sound problem solving strategy and above-average general cognition. I think you'll find varying levels of what you might consider nitpicking depending on the sor…
>> it can be a good signal for whether you have practical experience with X. This should be vetted out well in advance of an interview, especially for a developer. If you don't have at least a half dozen repos somewhere with code examples of sites or apps you've built, then there's a very high chance you're not going to get an interview. I've only been coding for 7-8 years and I have an extensive GitHub page, can poi…
If someone is working on proprietary software most of the time and has kids to raise, they may not have focused time to spend working on projects outside of their job.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#147I often joke that my ability to formulate good Google queries is the single most important part of my software engineering skillset. Except, you know, I'm not really joking.
This times a thousand. Google is also very good at what I call "meta-guidance." If I search for something and don't find any good results, there's two possibilities: a) I'm not asking the right question, or b) I'm trying to solve the wrong problem.
I've been trying to put into words for a while what you just said. Thank you.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I use DDG. Others may use bing, my point was to buck the Kleenex-ation of Google. I don't Google things, or DDG things. I search for things
I use DDG on my non-work machines. Google is better at finding stuff for programming, particularly the random error messages.
I've tried to use DDG for programming but I've found that Google's efficiency is just too good to make DDG worthwhile. I guess I've decided to take the privacy hit in regards to developing activities.
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#149For programmers that were coding before good search engines: what did you do when you wanted to look up an error, etc back then? Crack open a tome for the language? Just curious as I can't imagine it was easy.
There are at least two periods 'before good search engines'. I guess there was a time in the 1950s/1960s when you asked the guy sitting in the next room, who wrote the software, what the error meant, or where you simply read the source code or disassembled the code to figure it out. When computers became more common, but weren't powerful enough yet for storing electronic documentation, you didn't crack open the tome;…
shudders
Re: Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently
#150I not only use Google frequently, I use it to search for things I myself have written in the past. I can't count the number of times I've Googled for a programming question where the answer is found on a Stack Overflow page I've written. If it's a particularly old answer that I've completely forgotten, I've even thought to myself, " Wow this genius sounds just like me! "[1]. [1]: ... as well as " This idiot has no cl…
That and finding a question you've search for, only to find out that question was also posted by you years ago. Bonus for ones with no answers still.
A weird, but wonderful feeling.