7 ms·

Towards Natural Language Semantic Code Search at GitHub

159 points by Chris911 8y ago

mullikine 8y ago
I want to work at github. They're making cool things.
- guessmyname 8y ago
  As of today, GitHub has 89 open positions: • 2 openings - Business Systems • 2 openings - Communications • 38 openings - Engineering • 3 openings - Finance • 1 opening - Internal Communications • 4 openings - Legal • 8 openings - Marketing • 2 openings - People Operations • 1 opening - Policy • 7 openings - Product • 8 openings - Sales • 9 openings - Security • 1 opening - Services • 3 openings - Support — https://github.com/about/careers https://github.com/about/careers
- brian-armstrong 8y ago
  Do they? The main product appears to have 0 product velocity
  - nkantar 8y ago
    I used to feel this way, but then I discovered https://blog.github.com/ https://blog.github.com/ and no longer do. Sure, they may not be addressing your/my specific concerns, but the product is changing.
- person_of_color 8y ago
  I want a MS.
finnh 8y ago
I would settle for the ability to use logical OR when searching issues/pull requests, or to combine multiple negated searches. "is:pr is:open ( author:bob OR author:jim )" The lack of this pretty basic functionality makes issue & PR search much less useful than it could be.
- matmo 8y ago
  Agreed. It'd also be nice to see a list of issues you're subscribed to. Here's a fun issue to follow for that - https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283
nraynaud 8y ago
wait, they can't search through forks or collate identical results and they are going into natural language processing?
rococode 8y ago
This might just be me, but does anyone else feel that GitHub's code search has other points that could be improved first? My biggest gripe is that the other results show in seems to be totally random. For example, if I have a Java class called A and I search "class A" in code search, the actual A.java doesn't tend to show up anywhere near the front. I just tried this in a repo and the actual A.java file was on the last page of results when I searched "class A". The vast majority of the results before it didn't even have the words "class" and "A" next to each other, which A.java does... Maybe I'm doing something wrong (I'd welcome any input on how to use code search correctly!), but it just feels like they're jumping the gun on trying to make their code search more advanced when the basic functionality doesn't work that well.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- samlambert 8y ago
  We are very aware of the problem. I think you are going to really love what we are working on.
  - snaky 8y ago
    Is it some search algorithm that is so new, unusual and groundbreaking you can't talk about until it patented, or what?
  - hiccuphippo 8y ago
    I really hope you are right and have your priorities straight when it comes to search. I'd love for a way to search for usages of a class::method, or for strings that contain the text "hello" or for variables named foo. And if you integrate that into the code itself, Ctrl+click a class method to find all usages, maybe even usages in other repositories, so I can see how other people use a certain library. And of course good old regex search.
    - lynxaegon 8y ago
      They are tagging so much code with text, that i'm sure they have something groundbreaking.
paintstripper 8y ago
They should add regex search support first before this stuff.
KenanSulayman 8y ago
GitHub is building some amazing stuff recently, I guess now that Microsoft is going to acquire them, there's far less pressure on making Github Enterprise profitable..
dgreensp 8y ago
It is a real cultural problem how engineers get more excited about machine learning than basic usability. GitHub search can't even search for a literal string, let alone a regex. It can't search a subdirectory. Ranking is indistinguishable from random. It's been this way for years. How about building an actual, usable, basic code search and then getting all fancy with your machine learning? I almost built my own "online git grep for GitHub" last year.
- brian-armstrong 8y ago
  Yes! When I read the post title I was really excited. The I clicked in and felt my heart sink a little. Engineers and PMs seem to be too easily swayed by shiny things.
- kornish 8y ago
  Agreed. Luckily, we as a community have tools like Sourcegraph which are based on battle-tested pragmatic systems from places like Google. Disclaimer: no affiliation, just love the team and product.
  - dgreensp 8y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation
  - welder 8y ago
    At first I thought this would replace Sourcegraph, but looks like it's just an experiment with NLP... Thank goodness we have Sourcegraph for searching GH but especially for searching GHEnterprise in an SOA environment where it's impossible to have every repo cloned locally for ripgrep. P.S. I'm not affiliated, we just use Sourcegraph at a company I work for.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    Damn, Sourcegraph is very close to something I've been thinking of building.
    - 8y ago
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
Now that’s what I call a misfeature! GitHub is used by programmers. Surprisingly, they tend to be very good at telling computers precisely what they want, in the computers’ own language. Natural language search is the exact opposite of this, invented for mom & pops who start their search phrase with “Dear Google, I’d like to search for ...”.
sam0x17 8y ago
It is awesome that they are working on this, but can I just say there are a lot of basic search features they need to add before "doing the hard thing". Here are some things that I should be able to do easily but can't (or can't very easily or well) using GitHub's search mechanism: 1. exact or close string searches for code that involves ![]{}_-*() etc characters 2. searches across past commits (e.g. find a line that used to be in the code) 4. search across pull request + comments (not just issues and commit messages) 5. advanced search operators -- there should be a full filtering UI with ands and ors etc Because of this I often find my self grepping locally, or (more often) totally out of luck.
tyingq 8y ago
I'd settle for github search that's case sensitive and recognizes things like dollar signs, semi-colons, commas, braces, and such.
DannyBee 8y ago
I saw this created in another thread and it seems to accurately sum up the comments here: https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2 https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2
- sqs 8y ago
  What thread did you originally see that in?
manigandham 8y ago
Devs don't search code repositories using natural language queries, and any scenarios of searching for code examples that way are already extremely well handled by StackOverflow and Google. This is an incredible waste of time and resources that could be spent making the existing search far better with very minor tweaks. A perfect example of big company project management where nobody seems to know what their users actually want.
HereBeBeasties 8y ago
Dear GitHub, Please build search that lets me actually find a given file by name. You are busy building a space rocket when all we want is a bicycle. Impressive, but useless for just popping down to the shops. Love, The rest of the world's developers

159 points by Chris911 8y ago

mullikine 8y ago

I want to work at github. They're making cool things.

guessmyname 8y ago
As of today, GitHub has 89 open positions: • 2 openings - Business Systems • 2 openings - Communications • 38 openings - Engineering • 3 openings - Finance • 1 opening - Internal Communications • 4 openings - Legal • 8 openings - Marketing • 2 openings - People Operations • 1 opening - Policy • 7 openings - Product • 8 openings - Sales • 9 openings - Security • 1 opening - Services • 3 openings - Support — https://github.com/about/careers https://github.com/about/careers
brian-armstrong 8y ago
Do they? The main product appears to have 0 product velocity
- nkantar 8y ago
  I used to feel this way, but then I discovered https://blog.github.com/ https://blog.github.com/ and no longer do. Sure, they may not be addressing your/my specific concerns, but the product is changing.
person_of_color 8y ago
I want a MS.

finnh 8y ago

I would settle for the ability to use logical OR when searching issues/pull requests, or to combine multiple negated searches. "is:pr is:open ( author:bob OR author:jim )" The lack of this pretty basic functionality makes issue & PR search much less useful than it could be.

matmo 8y ago
Agreed. It'd also be nice to see a list of issues you're subscribed to. Here's a fun issue to follow for that - https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283 https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283

nraynaud 8y ago

wait, they can't search through forks or collate identical results and they are going into natural language processing?

rococode 8y ago

This might just be me, but does anyone else feel that GitHub's code search has other points that could be improved first? My biggest gripe is that the other results show in seems to be totally random. For example, if I have a Java class called A and I search "class A" in code search, the actual A.java doesn't tend to show up anywhere near the front. I just tried this in a repo and the actual A.java file was on the last page of results when I searched "class A". The vast majority of the results before it didn't even have the words "class" and "A" next to each other, which A.java does... Maybe I'm doing something wrong (I'd welcome any input on how to use code search correctly!), but it just feels like they're jumping the gun on trying to make their code search more advanced when the basic functionality doesn't work that well.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
samlambert 8y ago
We are very aware of the problem. I think you are going to really love what we are working on.
- snaky 8y ago
  Is it some search algorithm that is so new, unusual and groundbreaking you can't talk about until it patented, or what?
- hiccuphippo 8y ago
  I really hope you are right and have your priorities straight when it comes to search. I'd love for a way to search for usages of a class::method, or for strings that contain the text "hello" or for variables named foo. And if you integrate that into the code itself, Ctrl+click a class method to find all usages, maybe even usages in other repositories, so I can see how other people use a certain library. And of course good old regex search.
  - lynxaegon 8y ago
    They are tagging so much code with text, that i'm sure they have something groundbreaking.

paintstripper 8y ago

They should add regex search support first before this stuff.

KenanSulayman 8y ago

GitHub is building some amazing stuff recently, I guess now that Microsoft is going to acquire them, there's far less pressure on making Github Enterprise profitable..

dgreensp 8y ago

It is a real cultural problem how engineers get more excited about machine learning than basic usability. GitHub search can't even search for a literal string, let alone a regex. It can't search a subdirectory. Ranking is indistinguishable from random. It's been this way for years. How about building an actual, usable, basic code search and then getting all fancy with your machine learning? I almost built my own "online git grep for GitHub" last year.

brian-armstrong 8y ago
Yes! When I read the post title I was really excited. The I clicked in and felt my heart sink a little. Engineers and PMs seem to be too easily swayed by shiny things.
kornish 8y ago
Agreed. Luckily, we as a community have tools like Sourcegraph which are based on battle-tested pragmatic systems from places like Google. Disclaimer: no affiliation, just love the team and product.
- dgreensp 8y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation
- welder 8y ago
  At first I thought this would replace Sourcegraph, but looks like it's just an experiment with NLP... Thank goodness we have Sourcegraph for searching GH but especially for searching GHEnterprise in an SOA environment where it's impossible to have every repo cloned locally for ripgrep. P.S. I'm not affiliated, we just use Sourcegraph at a company I work for.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Damn, Sourcegraph is very close to something I've been thinking of building.
  - 8y ago

aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago

Now that’s what I call a misfeature! GitHub is used by programmers. Surprisingly, they tend to be very good at telling computers precisely what they want, in the computers’ own language. Natural language search is the exact opposite of this, invented for mom & pops who start their search phrase with “Dear Google, I’d like to search for ...”.

sam0x17 8y ago

It is awesome that they are working on this, but can I just say there are a lot of basic search features they need to add before "doing the hard thing". Here are some things that I should be able to do easily but can't (or can't very easily or well) using GitHub's search mechanism: 1. exact or close string searches for code that involves ![]{}_-*() etc characters 2. searches across past commits (e.g. find a line that used to be in the code) 4. search across pull request + comments (not just issues and commit messages) 5. advanced search operators -- there should be a full filtering UI with ands and ors etc Because of this I often find my self grepping locally, or (more often) totally out of luck.

tyingq 8y ago

I'd settle for github search that's case sensitive and recognizes things like dollar signs, semi-colons, commas, braces, and such.

DannyBee 8y ago

I saw this created in another thread and it seems to accurately sum up the comments here: https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2 https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2

sqs 8y ago
What thread did you originally see that in?

manigandham 8y ago

Devs don't search code repositories using natural language queries, and any scenarios of searching for code examples that way are already extremely well handled by StackOverflow and Google. This is an incredible waste of time and resources that could be spent making the existing search far better with very minor tweaks. A perfect example of big company project management where nobody seems to know what their users actually want.

HereBeBeasties 8y ago

Dear GitHub, Please build search that lets me actually find a given file by name. You are busy building a space rocket when all we want is a bicycle. Impressive, but useless for just popping down to the shops. Love, The rest of the world's developers