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Nothing of essence in this post. I had a look at the other posts they all look similar. I greatly dislike this new trend of "doc-spaming" where everyone makes a

Nothing of essence in this post. I had a look at the other posts they all look similar. I greatly dislike this new trend of "doc-spaming" where everyone makes a blog writing walls of text explaining trivial things, crowding out the actual docs from search results. I swear to god whenever I search for something in the python standard library I have to scroll past a bunch of sites like this before i find the actual docs.

throwawayffffas 5y ago
A much better resource if you are new and want to understand the difference between where and having is here near the bottom. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/tutorial-agg.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/tutorial-agg.html
- RobertRoberts 5y ago
  Relevant snippet: > It is important to understand the interaction between aggregates and SQL's WHERE and HAVING clauses. The fundamental difference between WHERE and HAVING is this: WHERE selects input rows before groups and aggregates are computed (thus, it controls which rows go into the aggregate computation), whereas HAVING selects group rows after groups and aggregates are computed. Thus, the WHERE clause must not contain aggregate functions; it makes no sense to try to use an aggregate to determine which rows will be inputs to the aggregates. On the other hand, the HAVING clause always contains aggregate functions. (Strictly speaking, you are allowed to write a HAVING clause that doesn't use aggregates, but it's seldom useful. The same condition could be used more efficiently at the WHERE stage.) Thank you for linking this, it's very concise and actually helpful.
bgro 5y ago
The recipe writing community is leaking into the developer community.
- dspillett 5y ago
  Coming soon to a dev recipes site near you: post after post starting with a four paragraph retelling of a trip to the countryside, the packing for which made the writer think of custom aggregation functions...
- moeny 5y ago
  I see you would like a recipe for developers? https://wikidiff.com/spam/spam https://wikidiff.com/spam/spam https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/python/frameworks/-file-path-python/string+indexing+in+python https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/python/frameworks/... EDIT2: replaced statement of fact about WHERE/HAVING with this message.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  I've been looking for a decent application where I can import recipes, and add my own ones, keeping them private (because I didn't make them, but also allowing them to be released if I did invent them and want to share). A kind of Git for recipes, if you will. I've seen a few ones, but they always lack in one way or another: bloated Electron crap, small database or bogus content, or terrible UI.
nojs 5y ago
To be fair, the actual Python docs are also pretty verbose when you’re looking for quick answers.
- bussierem 5y ago
  True, but the Python docs aren't also trying to tell you a life story at the same time.
formerly_proven 5y ago
A lot of those feel like they're automatically generated. Highly formulaic structure, repetitive, borderline nonsense parroting of the "common wisdom". If they're actually written by humans, I feel sorry for them.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Probably non-native English speakers, such as Indian (example being "The Hacker News"...).
bityard 5y ago
This is a problem with the search engines, not the person who writes the website. (And I question why you wouldn't use the rather well organized docs.python.org for looking things up in the standard lib.) It may be time to admit that general purpose search engines are fundamentally broken and that the only useful way forward is subject-specific search that allows users to be in control of their results.
- l_g_r 5y ago
  100% agree that general purpose search engines are broken, the problem I see is that search functions on subject specific sites are often not indexed well (Google has had 20+ years fine tuning this after all).
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I don't think it's completely a problem with search engines. Blogs like this are engaging some amount of SEO the may push a fairly low quality entry up in the results, and that is a never ending arms race between the search engine. The bloggers themselves initiate the issue, and I don't see how subject-specific engines could completely solve that. Why would they be able to distinguish this article from a well written entry on a SQL topic that is not just a restatement of fairly basic knowledge? Docs don't cover everything, there's space for articles like this that follow the same basic structure but with more useful information, a and once people can infer a little bit about the search engine's algorithm from how it shows results then we're back to the SEO arms race.
- throwawayffffas 5y ago
  I agree it feels more and more that general purpose search engines are no longer the tool for looking for code documentation. But I wouldn't go as far as to say that the person who writes the website is not the problem. The content in these sites is usually borderline spam.
- salawat 5y ago
  >It may be time to admit that general purpose search engines are fundamentally broken I've been saying that since I first heard someone pitching SEO while eating lunch. Once you start gaming an index for visibility, Tragedy of the Commons goes into full swing, and the Yellow Pages ironically become a truer representation of actual local state. To this day, the memory of that...individual just going on and on casually talking pitching about what is no less than intentional pollution of the search structure of the collective knowledge of human still causes a hot nugget of incandescent rage and disgust deep within my soul. Before now, the thought of forgiving them has never entered my mind before now, and in this minute is quickly dismissed. I didn't know the person, they were themselves probably just trying to get by best they knew how. But I just can't seem to let it go. Poisoning the well like that... It either requires the most appalling sense of shallow callousness, profound ignorance, or a complete disregard for the integrity of our species' collective informational output. It's the burning of the Library of Alexandria by way of Salesman vying for attention. As time goes on the disgust only becomes becomes more pointed as the practice is normalized and refined to the point the way information is organized and made accessible on the Internet makes a bigger statement on what society really values than the indexed content itself does. I'd normally say live and let live, but I'm getting increasingly bothered by the suffering and extra cognitive load foisted on the world by ads, marketing, etc..., and the lack of societal wherewithal to push back and say enough is enough. Anyway, this rant brought to you by Libraries! Support your local branch today! Strike a blow for open access!
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
I swear to god whenever I search for something in the python standard library I have to scroll past a bunch of sites like this before i find the actual docs. The standard library docs have their own search. Plus there is always help()
mahdi7d1 5y ago
I swear to god I have the same problem as you do. These websites witch don't offer any additional value have taken all the search rankings.
gassiss 5y ago
This is why I love devdocs.io. I think it's supported by freecodecamp.org
- l72 5y ago
  wow, this is a great resource!
- throwawayffffas 5y ago
  That's great! I had made my mind to actually make this.
rmbyrro 5y ago
That's why I always search with a site:python.org filter. I created special "search engines" on my browser, so I start typing ":p" and whatever I write next it automatically searches using the site:python.org filter.
somehnacct3757 5y ago
I havent written any SQL in many years so I found it an informative read. I'm glad HN surfaced it to me, it's right at the fringe of my SQL knowledge and grew the domain. I think your problem is with search engines and not the writers of these articles, who probably don't consider you to be the target audience.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
I've had the opportunity to watch developers search for docs in different languages and python has surprisingly bad SEO for the official docs. Ruby and Golang do a lot better, and JS usually ends up at MDN or W3. (This is not a comparison between the languages, just an oddity about the docs)
justin66 5y ago
It’s less awful than the “hey guys look at the thing I just learned!” blog posts that are so embarrassing to read.
mschuster91 5y ago
> I greatly dislike this new trend of "doc-spaming" where everyone makes a blog writing walls of text explaining trivial things, crowding out the actual docs from search results. The thing is, documentation is (usually) written very dense, with a lot of assumptions about knowledge. The PostgreSQL documentation on WHERE vs HAVING is decent (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/tutorial-agg.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/tutorial-agg.html), but the MySQL documentation (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/select.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/select.html) is ... a lot to read and not very explanatory for someone who only rarely deals in SQL. Documentation writing is an art and most projects don't have the resources to have actually working documentation, much less understandable documentation - which is part of the reason why w3schools, stackoverflow, quora and random SEO "blogs" get so much traffic.

throwawayffffas 5y ago

A much better resource if you are new and want to understand the difference between where and having is here near the bottom. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/tutorial-agg.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/tutorial-agg.html

RobertRoberts 5y ago
Relevant snippet: > It is important to understand the interaction between aggregates and SQL's WHERE and HAVING clauses. The fundamental difference between WHERE and HAVING is this: WHERE selects input rows before groups and aggregates are computed (thus, it controls which rows go into the aggregate computation), whereas HAVING selects group rows after groups and aggregates are computed. Thus, the WHERE clause must not contain aggregate functions; it makes no sense to try to use an aggregate to determine which rows will be inputs to the aggregates. On the other hand, the HAVING clause always contains aggregate functions. (Strictly speaking, you are allowed to write a HAVING clause that doesn't use aggregates, but it's seldom useful. The same condition could be used more efficiently at the WHERE stage.) Thank you for linking this, it's very concise and actually helpful.

bgro 5y ago

The recipe writing community is leaking into the developer community.

dspillett 5y ago
Coming soon to a dev recipes site near you: post after post starting with a four paragraph retelling of a trip to the countryside, the packing for which made the writer think of custom aggregation functions...
moeny 5y ago
I see you would like a recipe for developers? https://wikidiff.com/spam/spam https://wikidiff.com/spam/spam https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/python/frameworks/-file-path-python/string+indexing+in+python https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/python/frameworks/... EDIT2: replaced statement of fact about WHERE/HAVING with this message.
Fnoord 5y ago
I've been looking for a decent application where I can import recipes, and add my own ones, keeping them private (because I didn't make them, but also allowing them to be released if I did invent them and want to share). A kind of Git for recipes, if you will. I've seen a few ones, but they always lack in one way or another: bloated Electron crap, small database or bogus content, or terrible UI.

nojs 5y ago

To be fair, the actual Python docs are also pretty verbose when you’re looking for quick answers.

bussierem 5y ago
True, but the Python docs aren't also trying to tell you a life story at the same time.

formerly_proven 5y ago

A lot of those feel like they're automatically generated. Highly formulaic structure, repetitive, borderline nonsense parroting of the "common wisdom". If they're actually written by humans, I feel sorry for them.

Fnoord 5y ago
Probably non-native English speakers, such as Indian (example being "The Hacker News"...).

bityard 5y ago

This is a problem with the search engines, not the person who writes the website. (And I question why you wouldn't use the rather well organized docs.python.org for looking things up in the standard lib.) It may be time to admit that general purpose search engines are fundamentally broken and that the only useful way forward is subject-specific search that allows users to be in control of their results.

l_g_r 5y ago
100% agree that general purpose search engines are broken, the problem I see is that search functions on subject specific sites are often not indexed well (Google has had 20+ years fine tuning this after all).
ineedasername 5y ago
I don't think it's completely a problem with search engines. Blogs like this are engaging some amount of SEO the may push a fairly low quality entry up in the results, and that is a never ending arms race between the search engine. The bloggers themselves initiate the issue, and I don't see how subject-specific engines could completely solve that. Why would they be able to distinguish this article from a well written entry on a SQL topic that is not just a restatement of fairly basic knowledge? Docs don't cover everything, there's space for articles like this that follow the same basic structure but with more useful information, a and once people can infer a little bit about the search engine's algorithm from how it shows results then we're back to the SEO arms race.
throwawayffffas 5y ago
I agree it feels more and more that general purpose search engines are no longer the tool for looking for code documentation. But I wouldn't go as far as to say that the person who writes the website is not the problem. The content in these sites is usually borderline spam.
salawat 5y ago
>It may be time to admit that general purpose search engines are fundamentally broken I've been saying that since I first heard someone pitching SEO while eating lunch. Once you start gaming an index for visibility, Tragedy of the Commons goes into full swing, and the Yellow Pages ironically become a truer representation of actual local state. To this day, the memory of that...individual just going on and on casually talking pitching about what is no less than intentional pollution of the search structure of the collective knowledge of human still causes a hot nugget of incandescent rage and disgust deep within my soul. Before now, the thought of forgiving them has never entered my mind before now, and in this minute is quickly dismissed. I didn't know the person, they were themselves probably just trying to get by best they knew how. But I just can't seem to let it go. Poisoning the well like that... It either requires the most appalling sense of shallow callousness, profound ignorance, or a complete disregard for the integrity of our species' collective informational output. It's the burning of the Library of Alexandria by way of Salesman vying for attention. As time goes on the disgust only becomes becomes more pointed as the practice is normalized and refined to the point the way information is organized and made accessible on the Internet makes a bigger statement on what society really values than the indexed content itself does. I'd normally say live and let live, but I'm getting increasingly bothered by the suffering and extra cognitive load foisted on the world by ads, marketing, etc..., and the lack of societal wherewithal to push back and say enough is enough. Anyway, this rant brought to you by Libraries! Support your local branch today! Strike a blow for open access!

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

I swear to god whenever I search for something in the python standard library I have to scroll past a bunch of sites like this before i find the actual docs. The standard library docs have their own search. Plus there is always help()

mahdi7d1 5y ago

I swear to god I have the same problem as you do. These websites witch don't offer any additional value have taken all the search rankings.

gassiss 5y ago

This is why I love devdocs.io. I think it's supported by freecodecamp.org

l72 5y ago
wow, this is a great resource!
throwawayffffas 5y ago
That's great! I had made my mind to actually make this.

rmbyrro 5y ago

That's why I always search with a site:python.org filter. I created special "search engines" on my browser, so I start typing ":p" and whatever I write next it automatically searches using the site:python.org filter.

somehnacct3757 5y ago

I havent written any SQL in many years so I found it an informative read. I'm glad HN surfaced it to me, it's right at the fringe of my SQL knowledge and grew the domain. I think your problem is with search engines and not the writers of these articles, who probably don't consider you to be the target audience.

kevinmchugh 5y ago

I've had the opportunity to watch developers search for docs in different languages and python has surprisingly bad SEO for the official docs. Ruby and Golang do a lot better, and JS usually ends up at MDN or W3. (This is not a comparison between the languages, just an oddity about the docs)

justin66 5y ago

It’s less awful than the “hey guys look at the thing I just learned!” blog posts that are so embarrassing to read.

mschuster91 5y ago

> I greatly dislike this new trend of "doc-spaming" where everyone makes a blog writing walls of text explaining trivial things, crowding out the actual docs from search results. The thing is, documentation is (usually) written very dense, with a lot of assumptions about knowledge. The PostgreSQL documentation on WHERE vs HAVING is decent (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/tutorial-agg.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/tutorial-agg.html), but the MySQL documentation (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/select.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/select.html) is ... a lot to read and not very explanatory for someone who only rarely deals in SQL. Documentation writing is an art and most projects don't have the resources to have actually working documentation, much less understandable documentation - which is part of the reason why w3schools, stackoverflow, quora and random SEO "blogs" get so much traffic.