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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

#101

Post by joshstrange »

rushingcreek wrote: post #91
joshstrange wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Could you post which examples you tried? It's not perfect, but the "Ask a followup" feature is usually smart enough to use existing context to refine.

I asked a question with "php" in the search then asked a follow up without including "php" in the search and it gave me python results. Also, and I'm sure this is a code formatting issue, the PHP code is invalid (newlines appear to be missing, the important one being after the opening tag) [0]

[0] https://cs.joshstrange.com/RP4B59

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

#102

Post by unsafecast »

wayy wrote: post #88
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…

A placeholder empty box that gets populated when the content arrives would be an improvement.

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

#103

Post by visarga »

lancesells wrote: post #78
GrinningFool wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that framing is missing some nuance. Seems more like they would be charging for the process that goes into sifting through those results and pulling out other people's work on the user's behalf.

Yeah, I can see there's a lot of work going into the process but it's still using other people's efforts without permission or compensation.

> using other people's efforts without permission or compensation

Like every web search done on Google? That said, I think attribution links should be displayed, license too if available. Copilot should be doing the same to defuse this discussion.

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

#104

Post by wayy »

ziddoap wrote: post #100

Maybe someone from the team can help me with a question regarding the privacy page/policy. > The searches we anonymously log be used to improve our product. > Your data will not be shared with any third party unless we are required to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims. > We will never sell your data to any third party. The fi…

We only collect anonymous queries + explicit feedback provided. No data is material to you. The privacy page was made pretty early on - we'll update it to be more precise. Thanks for pointing this out.

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

#105

Post by rushingcreek »

joshstrange wrote: post #101
rushingcreek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you post which examples you tried? It's not perfect, but the "Ask a followup" feature is usually smart enough to use existing context to refine.

I asked a question with "php" in the search then asked a follow up without including "php" in the search and it gave me python results. Also, and I'm sure this is a code formatting issue, the PHP code is invalid (newlines appear to be missing, the important one being after the opening tag) [0] [0] https://cs.joshstrange.com/RP4B59

I don't see a followup in the screenshot you provided. Again, we're definitely not perfect with followups, but we generally do capture context. It would be very helpful if you could tell us your original search query, your followup, and your intent with this question.

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

#106

Post by discreteevent »

visarga wrote: post #96
discreteevent wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowest common denominator and "one click" is killing the internet for me. A lot of times I am the lowest common denominator and so that's fine. But when I am a specialist I want something that lets me be specific and gives me specific results.

How much more specific do you need than having the ability to refine your question iteratively? I think regular search engine only allow for a few special keywords. Here you can use natural language to refine.

Sorry, I meant this in response to the part of the parent's comment about not wanting a specific search engine for code. To make it clear - I could see myself using this engine.

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

#107

Post by closedloop129 »

rushingcreek wrote: post #37
skilled wrote: post #34

Not to be too critical but the results I got so far have been subpar. Seeing a lot of hyperbole/clickbait articles. Let's say I'm searching for front-end frameworks. Each article has the word "best" in the title, yet doesn't link to resources like State of JS, Stack Overflow Survey or other similar sites. So, in this context "best" is subjective. I can't be bothered with subjective results when I'm trying to find out…

Those articles are coming from Bing as of right now. Our offering is based on analyzing those articles and summarizing them/picking out the most relevant parts. We definitely plan to augment (and eventually replace Bing) with our own index.

Have you considered using blacklists? You could cooperate with Brave and their Goggles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31837986

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

#108

Post by rushingcreek »

joshstrange wrote: post #98
rushingcreek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Consistent, non-moving (as things load) UI is super important. Also something that bugged me but I didn't realize why until now: don't use the full width for the description under links (or the titles for that matter). We've known for some time now that if you make text too wide it becomes harder to read. My suggestions: * Kill the padding/margins, it's pretty for demos or certain cases but I want to be able to see m…

Thank you, the cleaned up version is helpful. We definitely have a lot of UX work to do :)

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

#109

Post by mdaniel »

masukomi wrote: post #80
rushingcreek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our index is based on Bing as of right now -- if they give us low-quality results, our generated answers will be low quality as well. We're definitely aware of this and are working on developing our own index to augment Bing's in cases like this.

while i assume there are good business reasons you're basing your stuff on Bing, it's notable that as a general rule developers don't use bing. In my experience the google results are radically better.

> while i assume there are good business reasons you're basing your stuff on Bing

I'd strongly suspect it's the same reason DDG does so: Bing offers a search API, and Google has no incentive to offer access to its index and results

There are plenty of companies that make a living scraping results out of Google, so I don't mean to say it's impossible, it's just a monster amount of energy playing cat and mouse with what is effectively an unlimited budget to stop one from accomplishing that goal

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

#110

Post by jerrysievert »

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…

a search for v8 gave me:

* juice

* v8 engine

* juice

* v8 engine

* juice

so definitely some non-programming searches showing up, unfortunately none of the documentation sources for v8.

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