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Hey HN, I'm the developer behind SyntaxDB. This feedback is good and I encourage people to keep it coming! A lot of responses will be about "there's no result

Hey HN, I'm the developer behind SyntaxDB. This feedback is good and I encourage people to keep it coming! A lot of responses will be about "there's no result for x". You're right, there isn't nearly as much content on the site as I'd like there to be! The content is actually hand written, and as of right now focuses on the very basic programming fundamentals common across all of the languages. The plan is to triple the amount of content in the database (adding DS, special classes, parsing, etc.), and eventually open up the database to outside contributions. Additional languages are coming too!

smhenderson 10y ago
Good to know, I was coming to say something about smart pointers in C++ and a few other things I tried with no results. Not sure how you're doing the querying but when I dropped the "smart" from "C++ smart pointers" it did return a result. Does every word in the search have to match then? I'd have thought, similar to Google, that it would return results where at least some of the search keywords matched even if they all don't. Anyway, it looks like a good start. Even for people who already know a lot about programming it should be really useful for those times when you know what you need but just can't quite remember the full syntax of something.
- anthnguyen94 10y ago
  Yep, that has to do with the full-text search engine (Solr). There's definitely some optimizing to do, I definitely don't want additional words throwing off the search!
joelg236 10y ago
It would be very awesome to have this backend data user-contributed, makes the burden of adding and improving a lot less on you. I'm looking through the sections and see lots of little tiny things that would be a quick PR on github, and I'm sure there are tons of people who'd help out. Love the idea!
- anthnguyen94 10y ago
  Glad you like it! User contributions will definitely be a part of SyntaxDB in the near future.
Etheryte 10y ago
How do you plan to compare and compete with other projects such as Stack Overflow documentation (currently in closed beta iirc) which, as far as I can see, offers the same functionality, but a larger user base?
- anthnguyen94 10y ago
  SO documentation looks very cool actually, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I'm all for documentation being easier across all services, and I care a lot more about having this problem solved rather than pushing SyntaxDB to compete with existing services. With that being said, I think the current integrations and the ones planned ahead will continue to make SyntaxDB a good option, even if other sites try a similar idea.
bijection 10y ago
Great job! Have you considered moving the example section above the notes section?
- anthnguyen94 10y ago
  Glad you like it! When I designed the page, I thought it would look best if the code sections were split up. Interesting feedback, I'll get some other people's thoughts on this later.
arviewer 10y ago
Don't try to explain basic concepts in all languages. Better make sure that the languages you have are covered for as much as possible. Then add other languages.
holmb 10y ago
Reading https://syntaxdb.com/ref/python/sets https://syntaxdb.com/ref/python/sets I spotted an error. "setName = {} #another way to initialize set" ``` In [1]: s = {}; type(s) Out[1]: dict ```

smhenderson 10y ago

Good to know, I was coming to say something about smart pointers in C++ and a few other things I tried with no results. Not sure how you're doing the querying but when I dropped the "smart" from "C++ smart pointers" it did return a result. Does every word in the search have to match then? I'd have thought, similar to Google, that it would return results where at least some of the search keywords matched even if they all don't. Anyway, it looks like a good start. Even for people who already know a lot about programming it should be really useful for those times when you know what you need but just can't quite remember the full syntax of something.

anthnguyen94 10y ago
Yep, that has to do with the full-text search engine (Solr). There's definitely some optimizing to do, I definitely don't want additional words throwing off the search!

joelg236 10y ago

It would be very awesome to have this backend data user-contributed, makes the burden of adding and improving a lot less on you. I'm looking through the sections and see lots of little tiny things that would be a quick PR on github, and I'm sure there are tons of people who'd help out. Love the idea!

anthnguyen94 10y ago
Glad you like it! User contributions will definitely be a part of SyntaxDB in the near future.

Etheryte 10y ago

How do you plan to compare and compete with other projects such as Stack Overflow documentation (currently in closed beta iirc) which, as far as I can see, offers the same functionality, but a larger user base?

anthnguyen94 10y ago
SO documentation looks very cool actually, and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. I'm all for documentation being easier across all services, and I care a lot more about having this problem solved rather than pushing SyntaxDB to compete with existing services. With that being said, I think the current integrations and the ones planned ahead will continue to make SyntaxDB a good option, even if other sites try a similar idea.

bijection 10y ago

Great job! Have you considered moving the example section above the notes section?

anthnguyen94 10y ago
Glad you like it! When I designed the page, I thought it would look best if the code sections were split up. Interesting feedback, I'll get some other people's thoughts on this later.

arviewer 10y ago

Don't try to explain basic concepts in all languages. Better make sure that the languages you have are covered for as much as possible. Then add other languages.

holmb 10y ago

Reading https://syntaxdb.com/ref/python/sets https://syntaxdb.com/ref/python/sets I spotted an error. "setName = {} #another way to initialize set" ``` In [1]: s = {}; type(s) Out[1]: dict ```