Get better at Googling • Hacker News Board

Re: Get better at Googling

#241

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

loonster wrote: post #42

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #26

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?

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…

Does this apply to Google Scholar as well.

Re: Get better at Googling

#242

Post by ebiester » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #235

dereg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every platform only wants to return links to sites that run ads or commerce sites that buy ads. Providing useful information is a loss leader that needs to be optimized out of existence so that the C levels get a bonus for a job well done.

Providing useful information for free is a loss leader. Information may want to be free, but its creation is still expensive.

Re: Get better at Googling

#243

Post by net_greybeard » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #163

spike021 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If you don't understand how something works you shouldn't be including it in your project. I regularly reject PRs because of this.

Re: Get better at Googling

#244

Post by net_greybeard » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

madacol wrote: post #149

mywittyname wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

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

Not be harsh. But if someone is going to just quit because of jargon (which everyone has to learn btw) then Sayōnara.

Re: Get better at Googling

#245

Post by Noumenon72 » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

joncp wrote: post #66

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.

I watched a coworker Google the syntax for ElasticSearch the other day. He found stuff I never saw while reading the docs, intuited how the library should work while barely skimming the search results, and finished while I still would have been reading the documentation. I would have hired that guy to senior developer based on that one demonstration. He brought so much experience and context to everything he searched for that he finished 3x as fast as I would have.

Re: Get better at Googling

#246

Post by net_greybeard » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #144

net_greybeard wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. If the docs are garbage then you are going to have to find alternatives. However these days devs have never had it better.

Laughs in shitty Oracle docs.

I've worked in a lot of places where there were no docs and nobody knew how any worked. So be thankful that you have some docs.

Re: Get better at Googling

#247

Post by AndrewChamp » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

qyi wrote: post #201

> 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…

  "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..."

Wolfram Alpha does that better anyways. https://www.wolframalpha.com/

Re: Get better at Googling

#248

Post by djhn » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 4:52 AM UTC

firefoxd wrote: post #194

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 recei…

Aren't Gen Z and Boomers searching in a conversational style more and more, due to speech interfaces etc.? Both SEO folks and search engines seem to nowadays optimise for that kind of query. Stack Exchange is also question and answer - so often you can just Google whatever you think a stack exchange user would have asked, in a natural question format.

What you suggest is what us old school people do, since that's what worked best in the early years of search.

Re: Get better at Googling

#249

Post by nwienert » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

rcoveson wrote: post #219

qyi wrote: post #201

> 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…

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…

It’s nuts how every search comes up with covid results now. I search for some type of food? Covid. A supplement? Covid. GDP over time for a country? Covid.

They put so much weight on recent * news * mainstream. Very black mirror.

Even searching for explicit contrary takes will instead give you the same recent * mainstream * news.

Re: Get better at Googling

#250

Post by souprock » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

bingdig wrote: post #192

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.

Back in the good old days, filetype:exe would actually work.