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.
Get better at Googling
71–80 of 297 posts
Re: Get better at Googling
#72Google 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?
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.
Re: Get better at Googling
#73Not 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 However, googling might lead to outdated or incorrect information, especially when people jus…
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'.
Re: Get better at Googling
#74Google 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?
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?
Re: Get better at Googling
#75I 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 c…
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).
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.
Re: Get better at Googling
#76[deleted]
Re: Get better at Googling
#77Just 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 lan…
+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.
Re: Get better at Googling
#78Back 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.
Re: Get better at Googling
#79I'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.
Re: Get better at Googling
#80Back 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 ac…
Before google vendors supplied printed documentation.