8 ms·

Show HN: Devbook – Search Engine for Developers

168 points by mlejva 6y ago

mlejva 6y ago
Hello, I'm one of the creators of Devbook. My co-founder and I are both developers and we created Devbook to solve our own problem. We realized we spend more and more time searching for information on Google or retrieving data/information from 3rd party tools. It feels like we spend more time outside our IDE than in it. We think there should be a better way and it should be made specifically for developers to make them more productive and not less. That's why we started building Devbook - a search engine for developers. We are starting with a very simple version 1.0 where we let you search StackOverflow and public code on GitHub. Devbook is a desktop app that works similarly to Spotlight on macOS. You hit a shortcut, a window appears and you can start typing. We built the first version with developers' productivity in mind. You can control the whole app without touching the mouse. Our goal with the first version was to minimize context switching you as a developer need to do when looking for basic information on the internet. In the near future, we plan to add more integrations in which you can search and more features focused on improving customizability and general user experience. The app is free right now. In the future, we will introduce a subscription plan. But we would like to always offer a free plan. Also, to fully use the app, you don't need to sign up. Currently, we support only macOS. Happy to answer any question.
- kelsolaar 6y ago
  This is neat! Did not have much luck searching for that on neither SO or Github "python unique list values ordered". The first answer on Google is what I would expect: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44628186/convert-python-list-to-ordered-unique-values https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44628186/convert-python-... Given it is bound to a general shortcut ala Alfred (or Spotlight), would it make sense to integrate with the former for people who use it?
  - mlejva 6y ago
    We actually use Google's Search API under the hood. It might be possible that Google is giving you different results in a browser based on your search history. Can't really speak on integrations with Alfred and similar app right now. The idea is to build a separate app just for developers when they are searching for information.
    - kelsolaar 6y ago
      > It might be possible that Google is giving you different results in a browser based on your search history. This is actually from an Incognito window (same result in Firefox): https://imgur.com/tWCWQW1 https://imgur.com/tWCWQW1 > The idea is to build a separate app just for developers when they are searching for information. Right makes sense but if I could have everything integrated with the launcher I use, it would extremely helpful, atm your default shortcut is the default shortcut of Alfred for example.
      - mlejva 6y ago
        Ah yes, you're right. I forgot we sort questions based on their upvotes.
        minot 6y ago
        The follow up question I hope someone can answer is how does google sort them?
        wcarss 6y ago
        This is a bit of a cop out answer, but Google probably sorts them based on something derived from PageRank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank In other words: according to some approximation of the authority of the page, given the graph of links to that page, and their estimated authority in the domain of the searched keywords -- it's possible (and likely, I think?) they aren't using stack overflow's vote counts in their sort at all.
      - 6y ago
  - boogies 6y ago
    curl cheat.sh/python+unique+list+values+ordered returns the most-upvoted answer on that SO question. With the Free vim plugin¹, typing the question into your code buffer followed by `<leader>KK` should bring the answer up in a pager, `<leader>KP`/`<leader>KR` should paste it after/over (replacing) the question, and `<leader>KC` should toggle the explanatory comments. Seems like a greater ‘minimiz[ation of] context switching’ to me. ¹Emacs, Sublime, VSCode, IDEA, and QtCreator plugins with varying feature sets also available. No affiliation. https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh#editors-integration https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh#editors-integration
    - mxuribe 6y ago
      > curl cheat.sh/python+unique+list+values+ordered Wow, my mind is blown! I've been using cheat.sh for a little while now, but really only as a glorified man page interface...my mind is blown in a bunch of other ways that it can be used...Only now looking through what else is possible. I guess i should have actually read the manual on cheat.sh! Thanks for sharing! TIL
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  Does it support dedup in GitHub search? I spend way too much time going through duplicate searches.
drenvuk 6y ago
Does it work without the internet? As of right now I'm using Dash to search the docs of every language I use and stack overflow while I'm offline for maximum focus.
- jszymborski 6y ago
  This sounds brilliant! Unfortunately "Dash" is not super search-friendly; do you have a link I can check out?
  - jtsiskin 6y ago
    I’m assuming https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash
- mlejva 6y ago
  Not currently. It wouldn't make sense. We use Google search API and GitHub API to give you results.
tracyhenry 6y ago
I like the idea of in-IDE search to avoid context switch. However, I can only see the top-voted answer and can't even see what the question was. So I had to click on the link and open the browser anyways. Is it possible to add more context to completely avoid opening the browser? If so that would be a deal breaker for me compared to the VSCode/IntelliJ stackoverflow plugins (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Alexey-Strakh.stackoverflow-search https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Alexey-S..., https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9513-stackoverflow https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9513-stackoverflow) Also, can search on Github work without connecting accounts? By default Github allows you to search without logging in. So I was confused when I was asked to connect my Github account.
- mlejva 6y ago
  > See more of a question When you have selected a SO question, you can press enter or click on its title to display the full question with all the answers. Then you can press ESC to go back. Given you feedback, we didn't make that obvious enough. > Context Yes. We want to release a VSCode (and other IDEs+editors will follow) extension that will understand your current working context. The goal is to eliminate browser as much as possible. This way, for example, we would be able to extract errors from your terminal and offer you answers even before you start searching. > Unauthenticated search Unfortunately, GitHub let you do only 10 searches per minute as an unauthenticated user. We seemed to go over that limit fairly often from our internal testing. Once you authenticate yourself you get limit of 30 searches/minute. Eventually, we want to build our own index and use our API. Thank you for trying out the app!
  - tracyhenry 6y ago
    Gotcha! That's really useful. But yeah, the default looks of the underlined title (plus the trailing "open in browser" icon) make it really look like clicking would open the browser so I didn't bother clicking on it. It'd be nice if that's more clear. > extract errors from your terminal That sounds useful but challenging. Looking forward to seeing that ITF. > github search Y understood now. Nice work!
sali0 6y ago
This is awesome. Will definitely give this a try. I've been thinking of making something like this, but for research of technical topics. Google results a lot of the times are SEO'd to shit and it's difficult to get any good answers anymore. So lately I've been searching HN, Reddit and Twitter more as it's much easier to get good information. Using Google's search as you all are but giving a better ui and ux is a fantastic idea.
- mlejva 6y ago
  Thank you. Let me know if you run into any problems or have any question. Agree on the SEO point and generally results from Google. It has happened to me many times that I wasn't able to find the link I needed just because Google decided I don't needed based on my previous behavior + other variables.
rawoke083600 6y ago
Looks good ! Well done on launching it. Side Note Tip (VSCode): I was amazed the other day,that I can "search inside" the VSCode terminal window with "grep -rn mystr *" and then Ctrl+Click on the file results and VSCode will open it on the line numbers !
- mlejva 6y ago
  That's pretty useful tip, I had no idea either! I'll try it out next time when searching in VSCode.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kevsim 6y ago
I used to use Dash [0] all of the time when I was traveling a lot because I loved having all of the relevant docs and stack overflow questions available offline. How does your offering compare to theirs? 0: https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash
- mlejva 6y ago
  We don't let you search in docs right now. That will come later on. What we offer right now is search on StackOverflow and public GitHub code. Later on, we want to add many other integrations and offer a single input to let you search in all of them. We want to let you search in your infrastructure and actions you can do with them (we built Sidekick for this - https://getsidekick.app https://getsidekick.app), docs, your local code, your team wikis, other 3rd party dev tools like Sentry, etc. Also, we want to add "context". With this feature Devbook will understand what you're currently working on in your code editor/IDE and will offer you suggestions based on that. For example, you might get errors in terminal, Devbook will parse them and automatically search for answers. This way you will have answers for you problem without even having to search for anything.
- jamil7 6y ago
  I think Dash has a lot going for it despite not being cross-platform. I switch between nvim, xcode and pycharm throughout the day and like being able to look up a term without internet from any editor with a shortcut.
  - nickjj 6y ago
    While Dash isn't cross platform, there is Zeal https://zealdocs.org/ https://zealdocs.org/ which works on Windows, Linux and macOS. It's very similar.
  - zomgwat 6y ago
    Dash is pretty essential to my development workflow. I’ve found using Dash through the Alfred integration combined with multiple monitors to be very productive.
spiderfarmer 6y ago
I was just thinking today, mostly because of Mojeek, that to beat Google, you need to be better in at least one area. Once people use your search engine on a daily basis, you can add more areas where you can deliver better results. Just keep chipping away. It’s impossible to beat Google as a general search engine from the get go, but if you can become a tool people rely on, it’s possible to become really big.
joshxyz 6y ago
Stories in VSCode, Tinder in VSCode, and now StackOverflow in VSCode.. what's next, in-app payments in VSCode?
- joshxyz 6y ago
  Why the downvotes sir, arent we all up for gig economy in VSCode?.. :(
fareesh 6y ago
Does stackoverflow offer an offline copy for individual languages?
nathanganser 6y ago
Somehow syncing Github was not part of the onboarding process? You might want to add it to make it easier to get started. I guess I'm too used to StackOverflow's UI - will be hard to switch! But funny that a Pioneer company is building a dev version of the startup that got Daniel Gross into YC :)
nvilcins 6y ago
This is cool! Simple and solves a real problem. Good job!
davidbensoussan 6y ago
Don't have a mac, but looking forward to testing it on linux!
rvalue 6y ago
Is it opensource?
sambf 6y ago
I'm already using https://devdocs.io https://devdocs.io that aggregates a lot of docs pretty neatly, but would love to try your project when it arrives on Linux.
prtkgpt 6y ago
This is neat. I love the master search for developers fetching content across the reference tools. Looking forward to using this.
lloydatkinson 6y ago
What on earth? A Mac only application, that searches websites anyway? Why is it not a web based search engine?
- mromanuk 6y ago
  Why not? The UX of a native App can be 10x better, when I’m programming I’m 100% of my time on a Mac. Why I should use a lesser medium like a web browser? Kudos to the developer
  - lloydatkinson 6y ago
    Okay good for you, meanwhile the other 90% of the developer world using Windows and Linux are excluded because they can’t use this application to search websites...
- 18af219e 6y ago
  oil shouldn't smell right?
- whatyesaid 6y ago
  It seems to have multiple issues. StackOverflow and GitHub could be formatted with great effort, and stuff like language docs. But not blog posts which differ highly in formatting and need to display images, at that point, you're just outputting the webpage in an IDE. You'd also need a way to index/retrieve those blog posts. But, you also want actual browser features, as tabs are useful for further reading or comparing various things, or something to look at later. Just using multiple screen displays is good enough.
joeblau 6y ago
I downloaded it, installed it, searched for "SwiftUI button". The correct answer was the 3rd result. The first two results weren't even relevant at all. I love the concept but this is going to need to be a lot more accurate on basic searches for me to trust it with anything more robust.
- nvilcins 6y ago
  I guess the question is how fast did you arrive at the correct answer compared to switching to a web browser, googling the question, and sifting through those results before getting a "hit" (or whatever your default process would be).
Razengan 6y ago
The name made me think it must be a custom-made Linux laptop with 4 screens, 10 ports (for each USB version), SD card reader, a 69 TB SSD, 420 gigs of RAM, floppy disk drive and all the other things that True Professional Developers care about for $9.99
teddysc 6y ago
Amazing app! Is there a way to change the global keyboard shortcut after it's been set in v0.0.1?
- mlejva 6y ago
  Not yet. Will come in tomorrow’s update!
StillChill 6y ago
Tried it, liked it. Good job!
quelsolaar 6y ago
The fact that google/bing/ddg and the others cant tell the differens between C, C++ and C# makes the market ripe for improvement.
RocketSyntax 6y ago
it's a separate app? why not an IDE plugin? if i am going to switch apps away from my IDE then i am going to use a browser
redhale 6y ago
Mac only. Oh well...

168 points by mlejva 6y ago

Hello, I'm one of the creators of Devbook. My co-founder and I are both developers and we created Devbook to solve our own problem. We realized we spend more and more time searching for information on Google or retrieving data/information from 3rd party tools. It feels like we spend more time outside our IDE than in it. We think there should be a better way and it should be made specifically for developers to make them more productive and not less. That's why we started building Devbook - a search engine for developers. We are starting with a very simple version 1.0 where we let you search StackOverflow and public code on GitHub. Devbook is a desktop app that works similarly to Spotlight on macOS. You hit a shortcut, a window appears and you can start typing. We built the first version with developers' productivity in mind. You can control the whole app without touching the mouse. Our goal with the first version was to minimize context switching you as a developer need to do when looking for basic information on the internet. In the near future, we plan to add more integrations in which you can search and more features focused on improving customizability and general user experience. The app is free right now. In the future, we will introduce a subscription plan. But we would like to always offer a free plan. Also, to fully use the app, you don't need to sign up. Currently, we support only macOS. Happy to answer any question.

kelsolaar 6y ago
This is neat! Did not have much luck searching for that on neither SO or Github "python unique list values ordered". The first answer on Google is what I would expect: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44628186/convert-python-list-to-ordered-unique-values https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44628186/convert-python-... Given it is bound to a general shortcut ala Alfred (or Spotlight), would it make sense to integrate with the former for people who use it?
- mlejva 6y ago
  We actually use Google's Search API under the hood. It might be possible that Google is giving you different results in a browser based on your search history. Can't really speak on integrations with Alfred and similar app right now. The idea is to build a separate app just for developers when they are searching for information.
  - kelsolaar 6y ago
    > It might be possible that Google is giving you different results in a browser based on your search history. This is actually from an Incognito window (same result in Firefox): https://imgur.com/tWCWQW1 https://imgur.com/tWCWQW1 > The idea is to build a separate app just for developers when they are searching for information. Right makes sense but if I could have everything integrated with the launcher I use, it would extremely helpful, atm your default shortcut is the default shortcut of Alfred for example.
    - mlejva 6y ago
      Ah yes, you're right. I forgot we sort questions based on their upvotes.
      - minot 6y ago
        The follow up question I hope someone can answer is how does google sort them?
        wcarss 6y ago
        This is a bit of a cop out answer, but Google probably sorts them based on something derived from PageRank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank In other words: according to some approximation of the authority of the page, given the graph of links to that page, and their estimated authority in the domain of the searched keywords -- it's possible (and likely, I think?) they aren't using stack overflow's vote counts in their sort at all.
    - 6y ago
- boogies 6y ago
  curl cheat.sh/python+unique+list+values+ordered returns the most-upvoted answer on that SO question. With the Free vim plugin¹, typing the question into your code buffer followed by `<leader>KK` should bring the answer up in a pager, `<leader>KP`/`<leader>KR` should paste it after/over (replacing) the question, and `<leader>KC` should toggle the explanatory comments. Seems like a greater ‘minimiz[ation of] context switching’ to me. ¹Emacs, Sublime, VSCode, IDEA, and QtCreator plugins with varying feature sets also available. No affiliation. https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh#editors-integration https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh#editors-integration
  - mxuribe 6y ago
    > curl cheat.sh/python+unique+list+values+ordered Wow, my mind is blown! I've been using cheat.sh for a little while now, but really only as a glorified man page interface...my mind is blown in a bunch of other ways that it can be used...Only now looking through what else is possible. I guess i should have actually read the manual on cheat.sh! Thanks for sharing! TIL
adamnemecek 6y ago
Does it support dedup in GitHub search? I spend way too much time going through duplicate searches.

drenvuk 6y ago

Does it work without the internet? As of right now I'm using Dash to search the docs of every language I use and stack overflow while I'm offline for maximum focus.

jszymborski 6y ago
This sounds brilliant! Unfortunately "Dash" is not super search-friendly; do you have a link I can check out?
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  I’m assuming https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash
mlejva 6y ago
Not currently. It wouldn't make sense. We use Google search API and GitHub API to give you results.

tracyhenry 6y ago

I like the idea of in-IDE search to avoid context switch. However, I can only see the top-voted answer and can't even see what the question was. So I had to click on the link and open the browser anyways. Is it possible to add more context to completely avoid opening the browser? If so that would be a deal breaker for me compared to the VSCode/IntelliJ stackoverflow plugins (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Alexey-Strakh.stackoverflow-search https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Alexey-S..., https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9513-stackoverflow https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9513-stackoverflow) Also, can search on Github work without connecting accounts? By default Github allows you to search without logging in. So I was confused when I was asked to connect my Github account.

mlejva 6y ago
> See more of a question When you have selected a SO question, you can press enter or click on its title to display the full question with all the answers. Then you can press ESC to go back. Given you feedback, we didn't make that obvious enough. > Context Yes. We want to release a VSCode (and other IDEs+editors will follow) extension that will understand your current working context. The goal is to eliminate browser as much as possible. This way, for example, we would be able to extract errors from your terminal and offer you answers even before you start searching. > Unauthenticated search Unfortunately, GitHub let you do only 10 searches per minute as an unauthenticated user. We seemed to go over that limit fairly often from our internal testing. Once you authenticate yourself you get limit of 30 searches/minute. Eventually, we want to build our own index and use our API. Thank you for trying out the app!
- tracyhenry 6y ago
  Gotcha! That's really useful. But yeah, the default looks of the underlined title (plus the trailing "open in browser" icon) make it really look like clicking would open the browser so I didn't bother clicking on it. It'd be nice if that's more clear. > extract errors from your terminal That sounds useful but challenging. Looking forward to seeing that ITF. > github search Y understood now. Nice work!

sali0 6y ago

This is awesome. Will definitely give this a try. I've been thinking of making something like this, but for research of technical topics. Google results a lot of the times are SEO'd to shit and it's difficult to get any good answers anymore. So lately I've been searching HN, Reddit and Twitter more as it's much easier to get good information. Using Google's search as you all are but giving a better ui and ux is a fantastic idea.

mlejva 6y ago
Thank you. Let me know if you run into any problems or have any question. Agree on the SEO point and generally results from Google. It has happened to me many times that I wasn't able to find the link I needed just because Google decided I don't needed based on my previous behavior + other variables.

rawoke083600 6y ago

Looks good ! Well done on launching it. Side Note Tip (VSCode): I was amazed the other day,that I can "search inside" the VSCode terminal window with "grep -rn mystr *" and then Ctrl+Click on the file results and VSCode will open it on the line numbers !

mlejva 6y ago
That's pretty useful tip, I had no idea either! I'll try it out next time when searching in VSCode.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kevsim 6y ago

I used to use Dash [0] all of the time when I was traveling a lot because I loved having all of the relevant docs and stack overflow questions available offline. How does your offering compare to theirs? 0: https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash

mlejva 6y ago
We don't let you search in docs right now. That will come later on. What we offer right now is search on StackOverflow and public GitHub code. Later on, we want to add many other integrations and offer a single input to let you search in all of them. We want to let you search in your infrastructure and actions you can do with them (we built Sidekick for this - https://getsidekick.app https://getsidekick.app), docs, your local code, your team wikis, other 3rd party dev tools like Sentry, etc. Also, we want to add "context". With this feature Devbook will understand what you're currently working on in your code editor/IDE and will offer you suggestions based on that. For example, you might get errors in terminal, Devbook will parse them and automatically search for answers. This way you will have answers for you problem without even having to search for anything.
jamil7 6y ago
I think Dash has a lot going for it despite not being cross-platform. I switch between nvim, xcode and pycharm throughout the day and like being able to look up a term without internet from any editor with a shortcut.
- nickjj 6y ago
  While Dash isn't cross platform, there is Zeal https://zealdocs.org/ https://zealdocs.org/ which works on Windows, Linux and macOS. It's very similar.
- zomgwat 6y ago
  Dash is pretty essential to my development workflow. I’ve found using Dash through the Alfred integration combined with multiple monitors to be very productive.

spiderfarmer 6y ago

I was just thinking today, mostly because of Mojeek, that to beat Google, you need to be better in at least one area. Once people use your search engine on a daily basis, you can add more areas where you can deliver better results. Just keep chipping away. It’s impossible to beat Google as a general search engine from the get go, but if you can become a tool people rely on, it’s possible to become really big.

joshxyz 6y ago

Stories in VSCode, Tinder in VSCode, and now StackOverflow in VSCode.. what's next, in-app payments in VSCode?

joshxyz 6y ago
Why the downvotes sir, arent we all up for gig economy in VSCode?.. :(

fareesh 6y ago

Does stackoverflow offer an offline copy for individual languages?

nathanganser 6y ago

Somehow syncing Github was not part of the onboarding process? You might want to add it to make it easier to get started. I guess I'm too used to StackOverflow's UI - will be hard to switch! But funny that a Pioneer company is building a dev version of the startup that got Daniel Gross into YC :)

nvilcins 6y ago

This is cool! Simple and solves a real problem. Good job!

davidbensoussan 6y ago

Don't have a mac, but looking forward to testing it on linux!

rvalue 6y ago

Is it opensource?

sambf 6y ago

I'm already using https://devdocs.io https://devdocs.io that aggregates a lot of docs pretty neatly, but would love to try your project when it arrives on Linux.

prtkgpt 6y ago

This is neat. I love the master search for developers fetching content across the reference tools. Looking forward to using this.

lloydatkinson 6y ago

What on earth? A Mac only application, that searches websites anyway? Why is it not a web based search engine?

mromanuk 6y ago
Why not? The UX of a native App can be 10x better, when I’m programming I’m 100% of my time on a Mac. Why I should use a lesser medium like a web browser? Kudos to the developer
- lloydatkinson 6y ago
  Okay good for you, meanwhile the other 90% of the developer world using Windows and Linux are excluded because they can’t use this application to search websites...
18af219e 6y ago
oil shouldn't smell right?
whatyesaid 6y ago
It seems to have multiple issues. StackOverflow and GitHub could be formatted with great effort, and stuff like language docs. But not blog posts which differ highly in formatting and need to display images, at that point, you're just outputting the webpage in an IDE. You'd also need a way to index/retrieve those blog posts. But, you also want actual browser features, as tabs are useful for further reading or comparing various things, or something to look at later. Just using multiple screen displays is good enough.

joeblau 6y ago

I downloaded it, installed it, searched for "SwiftUI button". The correct answer was the 3rd result. The first two results weren't even relevant at all. I love the concept but this is going to need to be a lot more accurate on basic searches for me to trust it with anything more robust.

nvilcins 6y ago
I guess the question is how fast did you arrive at the correct answer compared to switching to a web browser, googling the question, and sifting through those results before getting a "hit" (or whatever your default process would be).

Razengan 6y ago

The name made me think it must be a custom-made Linux laptop with 4 screens, 10 ports (for each USB version), SD card reader, a 69 TB SSD, 420 gigs of RAM, floppy disk drive and all the other things that True Professional Developers care about for $9.99

teddysc 6y ago

Amazing app! Is there a way to change the global keyboard shortcut after it's been set in v0.0.1?

mlejva 6y ago
Not yet. Will come in tomorrow’s update!

StillChill 6y ago

Tried it, liked it. Good job!

quelsolaar 6y ago

The fact that google/bing/ddg and the others cant tell the differens between C, C++ and C# makes the market ripe for improvement.

RocketSyntax 6y ago

it's a separate app? why not an IDE plugin? if i am going to switch apps away from my IDE then i am going to use a browser

redhale 6y ago

Mac only. Oh well...