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

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

#81

Post by mikkergp »

One of your examples at the bottom of the page, is the "IsPalindrome". I guess the assumption is I would click on the "see Reference" as it doesn't provide any context for the code. This context of a real person explaining it is one of the benefits of sites like Stack Overflow, so I would think about this element of UX.

Also, I noticed in your palindrome reference example, it didn't choose the accepted answer from Stack Overflow. How did it choose the example? Also, the 2nd 2 reference panes, I can't tell what value they are adding. They seem like a list of random outputs of the ispalindrome script.

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

#82

Post by visarga »

joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

I think you missed the forest for the trees... it is a Q&A system not just a search engine. You can talk to it, you can refine your queries.

To the SayHello team: kudos for being faster than Google to release a Q&A+search system. I was expecting something like this for a couple of years wondering why Google was sleeping on its mountain of papers and not doing it.

Search was the first step in finding information, Q&A is the next logical step. Language models+search such as DeepMind RETRO have shown this approach to be very efficient: 25x reduction in model size for the same perplexity and verifiable correct answers with source document references.

In the future I expect search to become more like an assistant with context and language abilities. Retrieving a bunch of web pages is so 2000's. Q&A is especially relevant for mobile use with speech interface (hello Siri and Google Assistant).

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

#83

Post by rushingcreek »

joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

Thanks for the feedback. We agree that speed is incredibly important, and we're working on making searches much faster. We'll be iterating on the UI/UX as well, as we think that we can definitely do better and be more efficient with space.

I'd love to hear more about what you mean by "informationally dense" -- some search engines simply show more information on the results page, but that doesn't make results inherently better in my opinion because it frequently simply increases noise relative to signal.

Our current approach is to provide only the most relevant answers/code snippets and nothing else (high signal with low noise) as opposed to cramming in every Stack Overflow answer we can find. We realize we still have a long way to go to make it magical for every search, but we're working on it.

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

#84

Post by throwaway675309 »

TekMol wrote: post #3

I see whole solutions copied from other websites displayed on your site. Is that legal? Isn't there copyright on those?

Ding ding ding. This is the exact issue that a vocal minority are whingeing over github copilot for. It's automatically pasting results from websites without embedding the necessary attribution - so if you copy entire functions from this search engine (which may be coming from stack overflow for which attribution is required), then you're guilty of the same thing.

So I only see one of two outcomes:

1. Courts rule copilot is fair use in which case your search engine becomes largely superfluous

2. Courts rule copilot is infringement in which case all of these types of applications cannot be used commercially

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

#85

Post by hbn »

joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

Also the scraped snippet appears at the top of the results a couple seconds after the results load and it causes all the results below it to suddenly jerk lower on the page

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

#86

Post by joshstrange »

visarga wrote: post #82
joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

I think you missed the forest for the trees... it is a Q&A system not just a search engine. You can talk to it, you can refine your queries. To the SayHello team: kudos for being faster than Google to release a Q&A+search system. I was expecting something like this for a couple of years wondering why Google was sleeping on its mountain of papers and not doing it. Search was the first step in finding information, Q&A…

> I think you missed the forest for the trees... it is a Q&A system not just a search engine. You can talk to it, you can refine your queries.

From the creators:

> We're building a better search engine for software developers.

Also no you can't "talk to it", I'm not sure where you got that idea. It has a "Ask a follow up" but that performs a new search with none of the context of your previous search (also this UI of sliding a modal up from the bottom and layering the results is terrible).

> Search was the first step in finding information, Q&A is the next logical step.

And we are clearly not there. Not only does this not allow you to ask follow-ups to refine but it doesn't give good results in my testing.

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

#88

Post by wayy »

joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

To comment on the dynamic DOM - we're displaying up to three answer types (text, code, links) for each question. We're loading them independently to get information to the user as fast as possible. The alternative (in this state) is to have all of them wait until the slowest component finishes. We're still in the early stages of development, so either way it's not going to be perfect. I can see how this can be a poor experience for some - we're working on it.

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

#89

Post by rushingcreek »

ziddoap wrote: post #74
danenania wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your first comment, you say you want high information density. In this one, you say if there are irrelevant results on Google, you'll just ignore them and scroll past. I get that there's always a high bar to switch to a new tool, and Google obviously has certain advantages that are tough to replicate, but it seems like you're applying a bit of a double standard. If Google shows me a bunch of ads and irrelevant res…

Not the parent poster, but I think there is an important distinction between information density and information relevancy. Google is information dense (compared to this), but not all of it is relevant. This search engine aims for higher relevancy, but the density suffers from the stylistic choices of the creators.

This is exactly what we think. And yes, we definitely plan to do better with space efficiency

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

#90

Post by detaro »

rushingcreek wrote: post #83
joshstrange wrote: post #58

First Impressions: * I won't use a different search engine for programmers stuff vs everything else. So while this might be targeted toward software developers I can't see myself using it unless it can handle normal searches. * UI/UX - I hate the progress bar, I'm not sure at all what it's telling me as there are results shown while it's still completing. The results are way too spaced out. On my 27" 2K screen I can…

Thanks for the feedback. We agree that speed is incredibly important, and we're working on making searches much faster. We'll be iterating on the UI/UX as well, as we think that we can definitely do better and be more efficient with space. I'd love to hear more about what you mean by "informationally dense" -- some search engines simply show more information on the results page, but that doesn't make results inherent…

> some search engines simply show more information on the results page, but that doesn't make results inherently better in my opinion because it frequently simply increases noise relative to signal.

But if the "automatic" answer fails and I need to skim results, as I'll often need to do, you put 3 result previews in a space DDG and Google fit 5. They also apply reasonable defaults for the max line length - a basic typography thing that improves quick readability a lot.

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