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Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

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Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#231

Post by Retric »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #225
john-tells-all wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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++

Good programming books are some of the highest information density of any writing you can find. College professors tend to prefer the lower density versions which might be biasing people.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#232

Post by akrymski »

Rastonbury wrote: post #60

Somewhat tangential but I believe Google Search is going downhill, they seem to be losing the content junk spam SEO fight. Recently, I've had to append wiki/reddit/hn to queries I search for because everything near the top is shallow copied content marketing.

Google will only get worse with time because the core idea of PageRank relies on honest linking. Google saw the web before link farms were a thing, which allowed it to compute authority from a clean graph. As time passes and linking becomes gamed, the web graph becomes messier and the reliance on PageRank diminishes. AI doesn't replace PageRank, but it can be pretty good at predicting the results you're likely to click on with enough behavioural data - which doesn't work for long tail queries really

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#233

Post by kevstev »

andai wrote: post #202
ScottWRobinson wrote: post #129

For 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?

I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer friction of paying. In a corporate context it's going to be a days long battle, at best to get a new piece of software approved- just from an expense pov- we aren't even talking the IT and infosec teams. If it's technical content on a website, sure maybe I can pay out of pocket, but it's actually a lot less friction to just move onto the next site than to open up my wallet, get charged and maybe get what I am looking for that justifies the price.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#234

Post by schaum »

annoyed by that too, weirdly enough they pop up for certain queries and for others they don't. i have also seen that for github issues ..

but i switched to https://www.ecosia.org/ as my main search engine, and i like the results much more than on google - nothing special, but somehow more reliable/predictable. and meanwhile you plant some trees :P

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#236

Post by ancientworldnow »

notJim wrote: post #201
charlesdaniels wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we'll see a comeback of hand-curated directories of content? I feel like the "awesome list" trend is maybe the start of something there. I would be willing to pay an annual fee to have access to well-curated search results with all the clickbait, blogspam, etc. filtered out. Until then, I recommend uBlacklist[0], which allows you to hide sites by domain in the search results page for common search engines…

> hide sites by domain This gives me the idea to build a search engine that only contains content from domains that have been vouched for. Basically, you'd have an upvote/downvote system for the domains, perhaps with some walls to make sure only trusted users can upvote/downvote. It seems like in practice, many people do this anyway. This could be the best of both worlds between directories and search engines.

You don't need an upvote/downvote. If someone searches for X and clicks on results you just record when they stop trying sites or new search terms as you can assume the query has been answered. Reward that site. Most of them are already doing this in some form.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#237

Post by lazysheepherd »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #222
andai wrote: post #202

Earlier 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?

Most developers will rather spent 2 days to build something than pay $60 for something better.

I suspect the reason is the fact that not all developers live in the bay area, and $60 is a good money for them, and could worth more than 2 days.

Also if you code for fun anyways, you might as well build what you need, and get chance to use that shiny new technology while you do it. You save money, have fun, improve your resume, share projects with your friends and communities for kudos, all at the same time.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#238

Post by abakker »

I mean, while we're at it, can we get rid of blogspam? Try googling for instructions for installing cellulose insulation. It takes AGES to find a site that isn't just garbage vague content. It should be possible to detect and demote this stuff. it is so obvious.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#239

Post by dorkwood »

keewee7 wrote: post #229
dorkwood wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is interesting! Unfortunately if I try Google Netherlands (google.com/?gl=nl) I also get Miep, so it's not just a US thing.

Re: Ask HN: What are these low quality “code snippet” sites?

#240

Post by worik »

I do a lot of this sort of search

I have no idea what you are talking about (except for Apple's efforts at astro turfing, but that is not what you mean I think)

I use DuckDuckGo, is that why this does not bother me?

I have not used Google for search for years.

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