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This seems oriented towards answering a question like “how do I…” where you expect an explanation, but I’d say most of the web searching I do is pretty specific

This seems oriented towards answering a question like “how do I…” where you expect an explanation, but I’d say most of the web searching I do is pretty specific. Maybe half the time I know what I want (eg: the order of values in the animation CSS property), and from who (eg: MDN), so I just go to the relevant docs page via google with something like “MDN animation css”. The other 50% of the time, I’m searching an exact error string, probably in quotes, on google. For that I also don’t really want a knowledge graph answer, I’d much rather see a GitHub issue or stack overflow post and I’ll derive the context I need.

wayy 4y ago
We empirically find that most developer searches fall into a few categories consistent with this paper [0]. The author explains these categories nicely in her blog post [1]. It sounds like you're describing 4/6 of these categories: ad-hoc how-tos, understanding an API / recalling forgotten details, and troubleshooting. We currently do well at answering "ad hoc how-to" questions and are working to improve our answers in the other categories. This could either look like augmenting our existing natural language answer, or building a separate view specializing in official documentation or errors. [0] https://elisehe.in/i/googledrivendevelopment.pdf https://elisehe.in/i/googledrivendevelopment.pdf [1] https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/the-hidden-insights-in-developers-google-searches-47f05030cd2d https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/the-hidden-insights-in-develope...