It is just Google, with its amazing algorithms that rank established website way higher than a random spam website.
Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
221–230 of 323 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#222For years now I've ran a programming site (stackabuse.com) and have closely followed the state of Google SERPs when it comes to programming content. A few thoughts/ramblings: - The search results for programming content has been very volatile the last year or so. Google has released a lot of core algorithm updates in the last year, which has caused a lot of high-quality sites to either lose traffic or stagnate. - The…
>it's hard to convince programmers to pay for anything Offtopic but I'm curious why this is the case? Is the Free Software movement responsible for this mindset?
Most developers will rather spent 2 days to build something than pay $60 for something better.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using DDG for years, and its quality has recently gone down too. I was accustomed to using !g to search Google, but now I'm very surprised to find that the Google results are worse ! Google has completely lost the plot if DDG is the engine with the better results.
Yeah, it’s at the point where search engines are now closer to shortcut bars for me. It’s rare that I don’t have to append “wiki” or “Reddit” to my search in order to find a decent result (which I assumed existed before I even searched it). I wonder what the consequences are for discoverability on the web. It can’t be good. Maybe I’m waxing nostalgic, but it seemed like there was a time I discovered new and cool web…
> I wonder what the consequences are for discoverability on the web. It can’t be good. Maybe I’m waxing nostalgic, but it seemed like there was a time I discovered new and cool web sites. Now all I discover is ad spam clogging up the tubes.
I feel the exact same way too. I can't even discover blogs with solutions any more (even ones I know exist because I've seen them before), it's all just spam.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Google has absolutely dropped the ball - I'm not saying that it's easy to algorithmically rank good/bad content, but they're not even trying. A stop-gap solution would be to simply penalize anything with ads. Legitimate websites will still have enough "SEO juice" (for the lack of a better term) to offset the penalty, but brand new copycats with otherwise no inbound links to them from other legitimate webs…
How do you know Google is not already doing all those things? You said it yourself, you can't win them all and we're witnessing the result of that. If Google truly did nothing it would be an unimaginable chaos.
Because I’m not seeing the results. Let’s ignore SO copycats for now because that solution requires at least a slight amount of effort and look at the elephant in the room - Pinterest. Dealing with it is a simple “if image_search and domain == pinterest.com then skip” and they’re not even doing that.
They have a site that’s been polluting image search results for years, isn’t even trying to hide (unlike the SO copycats which could technically churn out an infinite amount of domains to work around bans) and they can’t even deal with that.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it's hard to convince programmers to pay for anything Offtopic but I'm curious why this is the case? Is the Free Software movement responsible for this mindset?
I train programmers, and strongly recommend they buy books or do other types of money/time investment to make themselves better (and more highly-paid programmers). They won't do it. I've had multiple programmers literally shocked and avoid my outstretched book. Once I got a question, said "I just read the answer to this in this book right here"... and the programmer refused to read the book to answer his question. I…
Maybe books are too low density. Like the “quantity of information” per amount of words is lower than a blog post for example.
I dunno, I’m not really a reading type but I do own programming-related books. It’s the only type of book I own. I learned a lot from books like The Clean Coder, The Pragmatic Programmer and some 90’s book about Design Patterns with c++ examples and I don’t even write c++
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valid questions. I just think it's faster. One action on tomdn.com instead of 1. DDG "array.map mdn", 2. Find MDN result (usually first), 3. Click result, 4. See docs. Bangs are great, just shorter again to use tomdn.com: - `!mdn array.map` leads me to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=array.map , which I have to scan the results and click on. - tomdn.com?array.map leads me to the exact page in the docs. h…
`! mdn array.map` takes you right to MDN
Totally had no idea. Thanks for the tip. I guess tomdn.com is for non-ddg users only.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#227> Every programmer should be grateful for the opportunity to find good quality content quickly
Totally. There should be a better way to index SO.
you.com seems to try doing it that way. For most code issues, it's easier to navigate and decide what's worth reading from You than from google IMO.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it's hard to convince programmers to pay for anything Offtopic but I'm curious why this is the case? Is the Free Software movement responsible for this mindset?
The content I want already exists. It’s provided for no charge on stackoverflow, reddit, Wikipedia, cppreference, and a handful of other high quality sources. All of which do not charge users a fee, most of which obtain the content from users in the first place. So as far as I see it, the problem is not that the content is uneconomical to produce. The problem is that searching doesn’t discover the content I want. It…
Wikipedia is trash
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Search has been going downhill _fast_ over the past 5 years or so. Since it's probably incompetence rather than malice, what the heck is going on at Google Search? It seems to me the "let's use AI for everything" camp has taken over the entire place even though it's making Search worse than it ever was. And please spare me the excuse that now Google can answer questions. It can't, it just answers with snippets…
If I search "who gave away Anne Frank's hiding place?", Google confidently gives me the answer "Miep Gies". I don't know why Google would even suggest this -- Miep was one of Anne's helpers. Imagine all the other people out there having their names unfairly smeared by Google's algorithm.
Interesting. Using that query on Google Denmark (google.com/?gl=dk) gives a more plausible answer, Van Maaren, but Google US (google.com/?gl=us) gives the wrong answer, Miep Gies.
Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does give me pause, but do you really think there is no way to have both open algorithm and good results? What is users assessed sites as they used a search engine, and then this was broadcast back to the engine? I have a feeling there is a way to introduce randomness to this search engine in a way that smooths out the game theoretic arms race of gaming an algorithm. This goes against our natural urge to have a fu…
Markets dont work when everyone knows what I am THINKING. i.e. If I know with 100% certainty you are going to buy something for 1$ I just bid 1.0001. Same with Google search. If I know with 100% certainty that you rank pages in a certain way, I can game them. Markets only work when all data is available but no all opinions. Introducing random elements just makes it worse for everyone.
So why was google more effective before? Is this is product of the financial struggle of our society, or do you believe it is an inevitable consequence of a dominant search engine?