
Quickref – Experimental search engine for developers - feross
https://quickref.dev/
======
maddyboo
The biggest thing I miss from most search engines is first-class support for
special characters.

I usually resort to spelling out the symbols I’m looking for (“shebang bin env
versus bin bash”) but often people who ask questions or post issues on GitHub
use the actual symbols, not the words.

I’ve tried a couple of symbol-specific search engines (e.g.
[https://symbolhound.com](https://symbolhound.com)) but found it pretty hit-
or-miss.

I really wish Google/DuckDuckGo had better symbol support natively.

~~~
techbio
Apparently, like DuckDuckGo, this is based on Bing results and suffers from
the same general-web content indexing tradeoffs.

~~~
metrokoi
I was trying to research what types of tests are used to determine hormone
levels yesterday, but of course all the results are health sites about how to
get a hormone test or when you might need one. It takes several search
refinements to get any information that you are looking for.

All search engines suffer from an over abundance of information, so much so
that it's becoming more and more difficult to find useful information. You
really have to know quite a bit about the field you are researching and what
terms to use, but of course by that time you probably don't need to search for
it.

I want a type of search engine that is predictive and can filter out results
based on your search history (for example filter out surface level health
information sites if I almost never click on them).

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, health is the worst. So is anything related to parenting. In general,
any topic that's relevant to the majority of people on the planet is totally
swamped in content marketing garbage.

This makes me wonder how much a benefit the Internet really is for people,
information-wise. These general audience articles I see polluting top search
results tend to be at best non-informative, at worst spreading total bullshit,
and they're also designed to maximize the time you're spending reading them.

~~~
metrokoi
Exactly, and it's a compounding problem. The sites with the best information
don't win, it's the sites with content optimized to get clicks. It's a problem
that gets worse with time and more "real" information gets crowded out.

If there's already a good paper or article on what types of tests are used to
determine hormone levels I'm not going to make another one, even if it was
difficult to find. There are no such barriers stopping health blogs from
creating dozens of "why you need a testosterone test today!" articles,
however.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _There are no such barriers stopping health blogs from creating dozens of
> "why you need a testosterone test today!" articles, however._

What's even worse, there's good business in manufacturing (often copy-pasting
and lightly paraphrasing) such bullshit articles. It's actually an entire
profession at this point, called "content marketing".

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CGamesPlay
Cool! This seems pretty high quality for documentation search. I've gone ahead
and added it as my main web search engine for Dash App. Here's a few tests I
gave it. I think these tests are all moderately ambiguous, so it's acceptable
if the result isn't necessarily on the top.

\- "componentdidmount" -> React Component documentation

\- "express request" -> Express API documentation (monolithic documentation
page)

\- "quaternion lookat" -> Unity3D docs for "LookRotation" (the correct method
name)

\- "strings replace" -> go package is second result, adding "go" to query
makes it first

\- "dataframe read_csv" -> pandas read_csv documentation

It didn't handle these as well:

\- "browserrouter" -> nothing useful, react router documentation appears to
not be indexed

\- "python readlines" -> official documentation on this isn't in the top 10
results, and the 12th result is python2's version

\- "numpy normal distribution" -> a bunch of stack overflow questions that
don't even talk about np.random.normal

A meta-note: my Mac changes "numpy" to "bumpy" (or "lumpy" or any other word
it can think of ending in "umpy") and several other annoying autocorrects.
Maybe disable autocorrect on the search field?

------
res0nat0r
Everyone should be using devdocs their coding needs.
[https://devdocs.io/](https://devdocs.io/)

~~~
petepete
If there was a nice way to import these into GNOME's Devhelp (my favourite
documentation tool) it would be amazing.

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h327
Great idea! I would love to be able to constrain the language/ecosystem either
as part of the query or as a filter. I find myself working in one language and
doing a lot of searches for it, then switching languages and doing a lot of
searches for that one, etc.

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thayne
I searched for "java.lang.String", the first result is from javadocs for java
7, then java 8, then java 9. Anything more recent is nowhere to be seen. This
is even worse than google, where java 11 is the third result. I really like
the idea, but I would expect the first result to be from up-to-date
documentation, not from a version of java that was released almost a decade
ago.

~~~
dietr1ch
It seems that there could be a language filter too (`lang:c++`)

"shared_ptr" didn't pointed me to
[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/shared_ptr](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/shared_ptr)
:(

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prasanthmj
Great Idea! With a little bit of improvement, this could be the "go-to" tool
for developers. Its time there are specific search engines for specific
purposes with nice filters like this one.

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feross
This is super cool but there's currently some rough edges. For example, when I
search for "webtorrent", no official WebTorrent project link is returned until
the 5th result. SourceForge seems over-weighted. The 7th result is a random
GitHub issue. The GitHub org page is 11th and the main repo is 12th.

[https://quickref.dev/search?q=webtorrent&type=all](https://quickref.dev/search?q=webtorrent&type=all)

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pickdenis
When I search for "C string", the first couple results are about "C# strings".
I think this is a problem for a search engine aimed towards developers. At
least it doesn't show me lingerie (thanks Google for taking my 11 year old
innocence).

~~~
mastermojo
What's a (non-programming) C string? Any relation to a G String?

~~~
pickdenis
Yeah, it's the minimal amount of sub-waist underwear a woman can possibly wear
and still be allowed on TV (and Google SafeSearch, heh)

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habyte
This is an awesome idea! I couldn't find the project on Github (only the data
sources txt's)... am I missing something? Making it an open-source project is
really important if your target audience is made of devs.

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lostmsu
When I search from Firefox (on Android), then hit back and try to change
search terms, hitting "Go" on the keyboard shows results for the initial
search terms, and the input box also reset to them.

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Gys
I expected a commandline interface :-)

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rdiddly
Motto: Google for people who know how to use Google

Edit: PS it's great!

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chme
I would like to see a git commit id search engine. Enter a git commit id and
get a link to a repository hosting that commit.

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save_ferris
I like this. Being able to easily filter on a certain type of result is a neat
idea.

One major shortcoming I commonly experience in search engines is poor support
for things like complex or custom logical symbols, bitwise operators and other
non-alphanumeric strings. None of the major search engines do this well AFAIK.

~~~
Lorin
Maybe he could use backticks for fine tuning instead of standard quotes

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travisgriggs
This will be fun to play with. It would be cool if there was duck duck go bang
code for it.

~~~
input_sh
You can submit a !bang request here pretty easily:
[https://duckduckgo.com/newbang](https://duckduckgo.com/newbang)

I've done it a few times so far.

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lumost
Great project! The query interpretation could better support phrasing and
orderig of terms. The query "migrating from postgres to mysql" only returns
results for "how to migrate from mysql to postgres"

only returns

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dimtion
Nice project, quick suggestion: you should map `/` to focus the search field.

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phoenix24
nice! do you mind talking about, how you built it?

~~~
snazz
Take a look here:
[https://lobste.rs/s/dji0it/experimental_search_engine_for#c_...](https://lobste.rs/s/dji0it/experimental_search_engine_for#c_k8h7vi)

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ykevinator
This is great, frank feedback: bad domain, extremely useful if it works, right
now it kind of works, you should absolutely continue this (I've been writing
code for 30 years, just to help you filter my feedback)

