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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

#141

Post by wayy »

lysecret wrote: post #136

Hey so, I have been working on a specialized search engine (at least you can think of it in this way). And for me a lot of the gains came because we could structure and restrain the search space in a meaningful way, such that we could build better distance metrics than a pure text search could do. I wonder what you think about that. Maybe one could submit a code snippet, or mark something as an error, or ask for a re…

We are absolutely experimenting with non-text inputs (and outputs as you can see). A big problem we see in mainstream search engines is that syntax is not parsed well. Understanding code as context for the query could be huge for developer search.

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

#142

Post by rushingcreek »

mikkergp wrote: post #81

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 St…

Our code ranking algorithm uses an NLP model (trained on a code dataset) to pick the most relevant snippets. You're right that the accepted answer on Stack Overflow is a good heuristic, and it's something we'll add to our ranking algorithm in the near future.

Showing an answer written by a human as a part of the code snippet is also a good idea.

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

#143

Post by FractalHQ »

izolate wrote: post #42

Congrats on the launch! Looks promising, so I'll try it out for a couple of days. One feature request at first glance: please default to the system font stack for code snippets. I see you're currently using Consolas, a Microsoft typeface, which is not pleasant to see as a mac user. You can use this to default to the system font on every platform: font-family: "SF Mono", "Monaco", "Inconsolata", "Fira Mono", "Droid Sa…

Why do you consider it unpleasant? I’m a mac user and I really like Consolas. I like to use it in VSCode or when building websites that display code blocks.

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

#145

Post by sailorganymede »

Personally I’ve never really had an issue with Google - I think my mental model with how it works is to the point it makes sense.

It would be amazing if this could be used for internal documentation however. Like we have so much documentation on our wiki which is just disorganised.

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

#146

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

sailorganymede wrote: post #145

Personally I’ve never really had an issue with Google - I think my mental model with how it works is to the point it makes sense. It would be amazing if this could be used for internal documentation however. Like we have so much documentation on our wiki which is just disorganised.

Stack overflow offers a version for companies. I've never used it, but it sounds like what you might want

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

#147

Post by rushingcreek »

sailorganymede wrote: post #145

Personally I’ve never really had an issue with Google - I think my mental model with how it works is to the point it makes sense. It would be amazing if this could be used for internal documentation however. Like we have so much documentation on our wiki which is just disorganised.

Indexing internal docs is one of our ideas for how to monetize. And it'd be great if you could tell me more about your mental model while using Google -- are there inconveniences that you brush aside?

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

#148

Post by harrisonjackson »

wayy wrote: post #51
gbro3n wrote: 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.

Is the assumption you are making that most developers would go to search first? rather than when they hit a blocker or error?
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