6 ms·

Stack Overflow results now included in MSDN Search

81 points by mwsherman 16y ago

andrewljohnson 16y ago
I rarely care so little about a tech-related article that I flag it, but here you go.
notyourwork 16y ago
This is great because there are many times I find community discussions/forum threads much more understandable than technical documents.
- jobu 16y ago
  They also bring in results from codeproject.com. This definitely makes MSDN search a first stop for tech-related info. No more weeding out experts-exchange or software.informer results from my Google search. I'm curious about the weighting they give for different sites. Some search terms don't bring in results from StackOverflow like I thought they would.
  - evo_9 16y ago
    * They also bring in results from codeproject.com.* Now that (CodeProject) result aggregation, yeah that's extremely cool/useful/helpful... did not know this.
subbu 16y ago
This is a win-win for both SO community and MSDN. SO has a lot more Q/A on .NET than any other platform/tech. That means there are a lot more .NET folks on it. Good luck to Joel, Jeff and SO community.
apl 16y ago
Fantastic stuff for certain communities. Using Google to site-search SO.com is a wonderful resource. I'm not a .NET developer, but if I were, then I'd appreciate this data-aggregating shortcut.
arithmetic 16y ago
It's nice to be able to go to one place to look for some .NET API. I no longer need to Google search a topic, and then open multiple tabs, each for MSDN, SO, experts-exchange, and other forums.
misterbwong 16y ago
Stack Overflow (well really, google, but SO usually comes up pretty close to the top) has become my go to resource for looking up problems and usage scenarios for my .NET dev. MSDN is woefully lacking in many respects and it's much easier to find relevant results on SO.
evo_9 16y ago
In general I find the MSDN information to be lacking. It's about as dry and straight-forward as you can get and rarely does my search for the 'answer' end there. It would be nice if you could choose to see these results mixed in or not. A check-box next to search field maybe?
- nigelsampson 16y ago
  I find I end up using the two different sites for different things. Stack Overflow for when I need help with a problem, and MSDN as a reference tool for the capabilities of a section of the framework. Integrating the two will be a great help.
sauce71 16y ago
This is so great. I actually look forward to the next time I need a really obscure winapi function. Apple?
mistermann 16y ago
I hope MS doesn't use this as an opportunity to put even less resources into MSDN and Help. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I used to be able to hit F1 to get context (good) sensitive help in Visual Studio - this hasn't worked for ~5 years for me. Luckily, it doesn't matter that much because of all the non-official sources...but I'm just curious why MSDN and help seems to not work, at all.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Back when I was trying to use MSDN, I could only assume they had a team of people whose job was ensuring that every document got a new URL with every major release, and that none of the URLs they had already assigned work anymore. Maybe if they had fewer resources they'd waste less time making both bookmarks and their own search results useless.

81 points by mwsherman 16y ago

I rarely care so little about a tech-related article that I flag it, but here you go.

This is great because there are many times I find community discussions/forum threads much more understandable than technical documents.

jobu 16y ago
They also bring in results from codeproject.com. This definitely makes MSDN search a first stop for tech-related info. No more weeding out experts-exchange or software.informer results from my Google search. I'm curious about the weighting they give for different sites. Some search terms don't bring in results from StackOverflow like I thought they would.
- evo_9 16y ago
  * They also bring in results from codeproject.com.* Now that (CodeProject) result aggregation, yeah that's extremely cool/useful/helpful... did not know this.

subbu 16y ago

This is a win-win for both SO community and MSDN. SO has a lot more Q/A on .NET than any other platform/tech. That means there are a lot more .NET folks on it. Good luck to Joel, Jeff and SO community.

apl 16y ago

Fantastic stuff for certain communities. Using Google to site-search SO.com is a wonderful resource. I'm not a .NET developer, but if I were, then I'd appreciate this data-aggregating shortcut.

arithmetic 16y ago

It's nice to be able to go to one place to look for some .NET API. I no longer need to Google search a topic, and then open multiple tabs, each for MSDN, SO, experts-exchange, and other forums.

misterbwong 16y ago

Stack Overflow (well really, google, but SO usually comes up pretty close to the top) has become my go to resource for looking up problems and usage scenarios for my .NET dev. MSDN is woefully lacking in many respects and it's much easier to find relevant results on SO.

evo_9 16y ago

In general I find the MSDN information to be lacking. It's about as dry and straight-forward as you can get and rarely does my search for the 'answer' end there. It would be nice if you could choose to see these results mixed in or not. A check-box next to search field maybe?

nigelsampson 16y ago
I find I end up using the two different sites for different things. Stack Overflow for when I need help with a problem, and MSDN as a reference tool for the capabilities of a section of the framework. Integrating the two will be a great help.

sauce71 16y ago

This is so great. I actually look forward to the next time I need a really obscure winapi function. Apple?

mistermann 16y ago

I hope MS doesn't use this as an opportunity to put even less resources into MSDN and Help. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I used to be able to hit F1 to get context (good) sensitive help in Visual Studio - this hasn't worked for ~5 years for me. Luckily, it doesn't matter that much because of all the non-official sources...but I'm just curious why MSDN and help seems to not work, at all.

prodigal_erik 16y ago
Back when I was trying to use MSDN, I could only assume they had a team of people whose job was ensuring that every document got a new URL with every major release, and that none of the URLs they had already assigned work anymore. Maybe if they had fewer resources they'd waste less time making both bookmarks and their own search results useless.