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Googling for Developers

We use google / duckduckgo / whatever all the time, but most of us have no training in how to use a search engine effectively.

It's a lot easier than it used to be, with natural language search, but far too often you can end up feeling like you're going round in circles

Sneaking up on the answer

  • when you'll know what you're looking for when you find it...

  • School assignment: write a two page report on "The climate of Krasnoyarsk and how it affects the plants, animals and people living there."

  • eh?

  • Start by simply pasting the assignment description into your search engine of choice

    • scan the results page without actually clicking into anything
    • if you're lucky, it will work, but usually the results are miles away from what you need

  • Search for part of your query: Krasnoyarsk climate

    • again, scan for useful information
    • Krasnoyarsk experiences a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb)
    • Köppen Classification: Continental Subarctic Climate

  • Change your query to use the new key words you've found:

  • "humid continental climate"

    • "humid continental climate" AND "plants and animals" AND "adaptation"
      • oops, too specific: I've got a page of science journals
    • "humid continental climate" AND "plants and animals"
      • that's better, but not as much as I'd hoped
    • "humid continental climate" plants animals
      • bingo: lots of links to general information

  • "Continental Subarctic Climate" plants animals

    • not nearly as much information

  • Now I'm worried because I don't know which description is correct

    • map:climate zones russia
    • map:krasnoyarsk
    • Huh. It looks like the region of Krasnoyarsk includes both of those climatic regions plus true Arctic Tundra as it stretches all the way up to the Northern coast of Siberia
    • better check if I'm supposed to be researching the city or the region!

If the search engine is deliberately misunderstanding you

Look at the "People also ask" and "Searches related to" sections on google

  • this shows what google thinks you might also be looking for
  • if it's way off, think about refining your query to exclude some of those keywords
  • if it's close, click on one and see where it takes you, or add one of the keywords to your own search

Try a different search engine

  • duckduckgo is to be particularly good if you are searching on an error trace, taking you straight to the accepted stackoverflow answer (and doesn't steal your data)
  • google has a much more extensive advanced search query syntax

Use the google Advanced Search option

  • https://www.google.com/advanced_search
  • particularly useful is the ability to limit your search to a specific time period
    • you really don't want to be following a Rails tutorial written in 2012, or a React tutorial written in 2018!
  • also great if you're looking for conference slides filetype:pptx Railsconf

Build your own advanced query

Use quotes to be more (or less) specific

  • rails scopes will return results with those words in any order
    • returns a whole page of rifle spares
  • "rails scopes" will return precisely that phrase
    • still a lot of rifle parts but the first few results are all ruby on rails
  • "ruby" will exclude synonyms, which google includes by default

Add operators and additional search words to refine (or expand) results

  • "rails scopes" ruby increases the desired results
    • + doesn't make any difference as far as I can see, so I assume that's the default
    • the search is NOT case sensitive
  • "rails scopes" -rifle or, indeed, "rails scopes" NOT rifle reduces the unwanted firearms, but rails scopes not rifle will actually return only gun parts
  • use OR or | with caution as often two separate searches will be more productive than one combined search
    • ("rails scope" OR "rails scopes") ruby gives general ruby tutorials, and not the specific rails scope(s) information we wanted
  • wildcards * can be useful
    • less so now that google automatically includes synonyms and spelling variants
    • more so to make a phrase less specific "some long error trace * with my code * specifics removed"
  • adding "how to" can increase the number of instructional results as opposed to documentation
  • get specific comparisons rspec vs minitest

Search within, or excluding, a specific web domain

  • site:stackoverflow.com scaffolding ruby will search within the specified site, getting around the generally useless internal search options for a lot of tutorial sites
  • css grid -site:w3schools.com will search everywhere BUT the specified site
  • link:ruby-doc.org -site:ruby-doc.org will find sites that link to the specified site, and exclude internal links
  • generally, use the advanced search for this kind of thing
  • particularly useful when you're trying to find a ruby gem and keep getting jewellery
    • ruby gem money vs. money site:rubygems.org

Search only in a specific part of the web page

  • allintitle:rails scopes will return only results containing all the specified words in the page title
    • useful if you're trying to re-find that really useful article from three weeks ago
  • generally, use the advanced search page for this kind of thing

When nothing is working

If the first 5-8 links on the results page of your most recent search have already been visited (and you actually read them rather than just opening a background tab!), and you're no closer to finding a useful answer, you may be looking in the wrong places. It's easy to believe that 'just one more search' will uncover the perfect solution, but...

Stop, take a break, and think about other ways you could phrase your query

Ruby is full of aliases and synonyms for methods: perhaps searching using chunk instead of group_by or slice will get you what you want in terms of splitting an array into equally-sized pieces (spoiler, rails has in_groups_of but ruby doesn't)

Remember that videos can also hold useful information, and the closer to the time a technology was first introduced, the more beginner friendly they will be

Ask actual humans (!) - they may not know the answer, but they could point to you a more appropriate search query or site, or pair with you to clarify what the issue is, or...