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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

#112

Very interesting. Some of my results with code examples looked awfully similar to GitHub CoPilot output. Is that being used to generate results sometimes?

Thanks :)

We actually do have a code generation model similar to CoPilot but it's not active yet on the backend. All of the code snippets you see are pulled from other websites.

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

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That wasn't what I searched for and did a follow, here is a repeat of the original and follow up I tried (or as best as I can remember, I know it actually showed me python code last time, now it's showing SQL and python results).

Original (php get end of day timestamp): https://cs.joshstrange.com/50y9Pf

Follow up (end of month timestamp): https://cs.joshstrange.com/hStUEm

Sidenote: This slide over modal (that hides the results of the first query, you cannot get to them once you do a follow up) has got to be the worst of all worlds. It's very unintuitive, doesn't provide any value, makes your initial query only as useful as what you can see "before the fold". Just redirect to the new results or append them under. This modal is frustrating to work with, it's a weird parallax-type thing: https://cs.joshstrange.com/d6rhPZ

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

#114
post #5

FYI: I clicked on get lucky, and went here: https://beta.sayhello.so/search?q=Check+if+string+is+a+palin... which for me in Safari is just an empty white page.

Do you have Javascript enabled?

While I'm not directly affected by this, a blank white page is always a symptom of careless error handling, even in the case where the user has JS turned off. The tag exists expressly to present information about your site's need to have JS enabled

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

#116
post #88

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…

Side-by-side is the best way to handle this. Show results on the left and load in the ML stuff on the right after it loads. This prevents content-jump and makes the results less wide (you want to aim for <700px to be more readable).

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Query autocomplete is on the roadmap :)

The odd thing to me was not missing autocomplete, it was that it says "start typing to search", but when you type, nothing happens. This is of course because the search field is not focused when you load the page, until you click it. It should maybe be "type here to search".

That shit drives me absolutely crazy when the one thing a user wants to do is interact with a search field, but the page doesn't choose to put focus on the input

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

#118

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.

Yep, I saw non-programming stuff but my worry is, if they are branding themselves as "better search engine for software developers", that programming-stuff will be weighted higher than non-programming stuff even if the search term has nothing to do with programming (or a tenuous link). Though your search examples seem to prove the exact opposite.

All that said the UI/UX is too frustrating to use (as-in) even if they don't promote programming content over non.

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

#119
post #51
post #43

Thought I'd try this on a problem I've been researching today (which I resolved) where my service worker for offline PWA usage was working for everything except audio files. I searched the following in say hello.so. "Service worker fails on request for audio file" I got back a couple of results related to general service worker use but none that get close to discussing the core problem that lead to the solution. The…

The description of the steps you took is super helpful feedback - thanks! Hello performs best on "how-to" questions at the moment. We're still working to improve troubleshooting type queries.

No problem. Good luck with the project.
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