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Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

#21

Post by mrwnmonm »

mrwnmonm wrote: post #17

I love the idea It may be a weird suggestion, but if the query to general topics returns something like this https://unzip.dev/archive (check how compact it is and delivers almost all you need to know about the subject to get you going), it would be perfect.

And what about books, just links to the most important books on the subject, without getting too philosophical about how to determine the most important ones.

Re: Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

#26

Post by wayy »

llaolleh wrote: post #15

Can you give an example of using the context of a previous query? I applaud you for trying to make a new search engine - it's not something sane people would try to do because of a certain behemoth eating everyone's lunch. It's going to take extraordinary insight and out of the box thinking to get something really good.

Our initial prototype focused on conversational search, with the ability to ask follow-up questions.

Here's a rather trivial example: Q: "Who founded Y Combinator?" A: "Paul Graham founded Y Combinator with Jessica Livingston and Trevor Blackwell."

If you scroll to the bottom of the answer page to ask a follow-up question: Q: "How old is he?" A: "Paul Graham is 57 years old. He founded Y Combinator in 2005."

Re: Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

#27

Post by rushingcreek »

lawl wrote: post #4

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intended scope of this engine, or I just ran into a bad result page, but: https://beta.sayhello.so/search?q=Java+aot+compile Does not seem to mention graal anywhere. (It's just a random test query that popped into my mind) Asking a full question for a code snippet seems to work: https://beta.sayhello.so/search?q=How+do+I+sort+a+map+in+Jav... How do you deal with licensing for these snip…

Because we're currently built on top of Bing's index, we're somewhat dependent on the raw pages they provide. If those pages don't mention graal, neither will our AI. Building out our own index is something we're working on.

It is currently up to the user to verify licensing for the snippets, but we try to make it easy (using the See Reference button) to go to the original source.

Re: Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

#28

Post by rushingcreek »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #25

Glad to see better search tooling for programmers since it's an essential task we do every day. How do you compare yourself to you.com's specialized search engine for developers? https://you.com/code

You.com is too similar to Google imo; we go significantly further than they do in terms of synthesizing explanations. Same goes for snippets; on You.com, you usually need to click on a button (.e.g "Open Side Panel") to get a code snippet which adds friction. Furthermore, they seem to be simply showing the full Stack Overflow page; our approach is to find and rank the most relevant code snippet while offering a "See Reference" button to make it easy to go to the original page.

Re: Launch HN: Hello (YC S22) – A search engine for developers

#29

Post by wayy »

mrwnmonm wrote: post #17

I love the idea It may be a weird suggestion, but if the query to general topics returns something like this https://unzip.dev/archive (check how compact it is and delivers almost all you need to know about the subject to get you going), it would be perfect.

Thanks for the feedback - I agree that explanations aren't the most appropriate for every kind of search. We're definitely considering different forms of search inputs and outputs (text, code, lists, etc.)
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