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Sourcegraph CEO here. We make a popular code search/intelligence product that partially competes with this (referenced many times in the comments here). Right n
by sqs 4y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. We make a popular code search/intelligence product that partially competes with this (referenced many times in the comments here). Right now, most devs don't use code search or know why it's great. GitHub's new code search is introducing many more devs to code search, and that is helping us.
Devs win when Sourcegraph and GitHub compete. And yes, Microsoft/GitHub will compete fiercely with us--and we'll compete back. Devs should cheer on the competition, rather than let Microsoft/GitHub get complacent.
There are 2 situations where Sourcegraph shines:
1. When you use something many times daily, then you need/deserve the best. We're 100% focused on being 100x better: speed, precise/cross-repo code nav, comprehensive result sets, all branches/commits, more code metadata, all code hosts (GitLab+Bitbucket+any others), way more languages, batch changes, insights, etc. GitHub's code search will be a good place to start if you're new to code search, but Sourcegraph is and will continue to be better for devs who rely on code search frequently, which in my experience is most devs once they get hooked on code search. :) (If we aren't much better than GitHub code search, we don't deserve to exist. Please give us direct feedback on how we can be better--the more competition Microsoft/GitHub feels, the better for everyone!)
2. For companies whose needs differ from what GitHub's core userbase wants, such as self-hosted deployment, single-tenant/managed-instance cloud deployment, massive codebases, numerous repositories, many languages, many code hosts, custom integrations, heavy API usage, etc.
Whether you use Sourcegraph or GitHub, we'll keep improving Sourcegraph to keep up the competitive pressure on GitHub to continue improving their code search. Everyone wins. :)
- sqs 4y agoAlso, regarding Microsoft/GitHub code search's distribution advantage for companies whose code is already all on GitHub.com: 1. That means our product needs to be even better, and we're up for that challenge! Devs thankfully have a lot of choice over what tools they use, and a better product that devs demand will thrive even in the face of a Microsoft/GitHub distribution advantage. 2. Sourcegraph has plenty of advantages, too: we're 100% focused on this (vs. it just being one of Microsoft/GitHub's many features), our customers are extremely sophisticated eng teams with heavy usage who help us see and build the future of code search, we address a much larger market (not just companies with code exclusively on GitHub.com), etc. 3. Not all the world's code is on GitHub.com. Far from it! And thank goodness. GitLab, Bitbucket, and tons of other code hosts exist, which means that Microsoft/GitHub doesn't have a monopoly. Let's keep it that way. 4. To the extent Microsoft/GitHub has a distribution advantage for code on GitHub.com, that makes it all the more important to keep the competitive pressure on Microsoft/GitHub so they don't get complacent and exploit their advantage in one area (code hosting) to dominate another area. So even if you're using GitHub code search today, root for more competition!
- SGEntCust 4y agoIt's interesting that you bring up "more code metadata" and "self-hosted deployment" as strengths of Sourcegraph. I work for a company that licenses the self-hosted enterprise SG. We have had bugs open for months due to code metadata issues crippling the usefulness of the tool. Specifically, deleted repositories are not getting de-indexed and archived repositories are not getting indexed as such. This makes search results extremely noisy and in some cases outright incorrect. This forces our teams to create extensive "search contexts" in order to find relevant results. I use this tool daily and advocate for more usage internally, which speaks to its usefulness, but it's painful to teach new users all the caveats of poor data quality.
- sqs 4y agoI'm really sorry about those problems. Can you please email me at sqs@sourcegraph.com and let me know which company you're at? I will see why these haven't been fixed yet and figure out how we can get them resolved for your company ASAP. edit: The person emailed me (thank you!), and we will get this resolved ASAP.
- metadat 4y ago@sqs: Quinn, is it common to leave enterprise customers' bugs open for months? Why does it take social media escalation to gain traction? I say this as a big fan of SG, because issues like this ring like a big red alarm bell to me. The GitHub monopoly stranglehold over OSS needs to be broken, not further enriched. You are one of our only hopes..
- sqs 4y agoNo, this is neither common nor acceptable.
- COMMENT___ 4y agoJust passing by, but I’d love to read a story what happened with this user’s bug report. This looks like a serious usability problem for those who delete or re-create repositories often, and I guess that it wasn’t prioritised correctly or went into dev/null due to pilot’s error. So where exactly this report got stuck?