5 ms·

Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has maintained their core operating system, IMO. What could be more significant over the last 20 yea

by beart 2y ago

Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has maintained their core operating system, IMO. What could be more significant over the last 20 years than "search", and where does there exist a worst implementation of it in a major piece of software? Everything really puts a spotlight on this with how simple and effective it is.

fuzztester 2y ago
>Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has maintained their core operating system, IMO. Upvoted. Bing(o)!
rl3 2y ago
Windows Explorer can't even sort files in a timely fashion most of the time. It's pathetic.
sickblastoise 2y ago
I seriously don’t understand how searching for a file in windows takes so long and yields such crappy results? What abomination must there be under the hood for it to be this consistently bad for all of these years? Microsoft devs chime in if you have any insight.
- beefnugs 2y ago
  Somehow i don't even think it is enshittification, because their search has been bad forever. On all previous versions of windows server even. ok ok, maybe it would slow things down to index shared drives? well how do you fuck up simple search on the LOCAL computer too???? I have to use powershell to do searching "gci -recurse" is built in alias for get-childitem. And it wasn't too many more lines of code to start searching the contents of word and excel files. (although this does take a lot longer, at least it works)
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    WinXP Search was pretty good.
danbruc 2y ago
I agree that searching on Windows sucks but I guess there is a trade-off to be made. You can use very abstract APIs that will work for all kinds of file systems, whether a local disks, a DVD, a USB connected phone, or a network drive, but it will be slow and limited because you can only rely on the lowest common denominator. On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level, but it will only work for a specific target. So I can at least see how you can end up with what we have.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  > On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level [...] This is how WizTree works and why it's significantly faster than WinDirStat. WinDirStat uses the system APIs to crawl the file system tree which results in lots of random reads and drive cache thrashing. WizTree directly reads and parses the file system data, making it an order of magnitude (Even 2+ orders of magnitude on magnetic drives!) faster. It also uncovers lots of hidden system files.
- gmiller123456 2y ago
  Lol, Windows search doesn't suck because of the filesystems it supports. I can only assume you're a Linux or Mac user who has never used the Windows menu before, as quite literally anyone who has seen it would not come to such a conclusion. I envy you, so I will not taint your view of reality with an actual description of why it is so universally hated.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Or, you build "highly specialized functionality" for multiple media / file systems, use them accordingly, and merge the results.
  - danbruc 2y ago
    At the cost of a huge increase in complexity and maintenance costs, that is the trade-off.
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
It drives me bonkers that when I hit the Windows key and type "bash", the first suggestion is always "Git Bash", which I have never used, when I truly want it to just run "bash" from WSL, which is not only a perfect text match, but actually gets used. But not only is "bash" not the first result, it's not even the second, third, or fourth. Between the "Best match" of "Git Bash" and the actual "bash" command is 10 web search results that I have zero interest in and have never had an interest in. I just don't get it. "bash" is an exact string match and always the result I choose. How is "Git Bash" still considered the "Best match"?
- okasaki 2y ago
  When I type in 'reboot' it gives me Reboot the movie in some online store. They have played us for fools.
- high_pathetic 2y ago
  It's the opposite for me. I don't use bash.exe on my Windows machine and it is the first match when I type "bash". "Git Bash" is the second best match. I have no other results. Windows 10 Home Edition 10.0.19045.
listenallyall 2y ago
I agree that MS built-in search sucks... but so do the default MacOS and Linux search implementations. I've said for a long time that Everything should be incorporated into core Windows, until then, at least it is available on Windows. Other OSes don't have an equivalent.

by beart 2y ago

fuzztester 2y ago

>Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has maintained their core operating system, IMO. Upvoted. Bing(o)!

rl3 2y ago

Windows Explorer can't even sort files in a timely fashion most of the time. It's pathetic.

sickblastoise 2y ago

I seriously don’t understand how searching for a file in windows takes so long and yields such crappy results? What abomination must there be under the hood for it to be this consistently bad for all of these years? Microsoft devs chime in if you have any insight.

beefnugs 2y ago
Somehow i don't even think it is enshittification, because their search has been bad forever. On all previous versions of windows server even. ok ok, maybe it would slow things down to index shared drives? well how do you fuck up simple search on the LOCAL computer too???? I have to use powershell to do searching "gci -recurse" is built in alias for get-childitem. And it wasn't too many more lines of code to start searching the contents of word and excel files. (although this does take a lot longer, at least it works)
- HaZeust 2y ago
  WinXP Search was pretty good.

danbruc 2y ago

I agree that searching on Windows sucks but I guess there is a trade-off to be made. You can use very abstract APIs that will work for all kinds of file systems, whether a local disks, a DVD, a USB connected phone, or a network drive, but it will be slow and limited because you can only rely on the lowest common denominator. On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level, but it will only work for a specific target. So I can at least see how you can end up with what we have.

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
> On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level [...] This is how WizTree works and why it's significantly faster than WinDirStat. WinDirStat uses the system APIs to crawl the file system tree which results in lots of random reads and drive cache thrashing. WizTree directly reads and parses the file system data, making it an order of magnitude (Even 2+ orders of magnitude on magnetic drives!) faster. It also uncovers lots of hidden system files.
gmiller123456 2y ago
Lol, Windows search doesn't suck because of the filesystems it supports. I can only assume you're a Linux or Mac user who has never used the Windows menu before, as quite literally anyone who has seen it would not come to such a conclusion. I envy you, so I will not taint your view of reality with an actual description of why it is so universally hated.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Or, you build "highly specialized functionality" for multiple media / file systems, use them accordingly, and merge the results.
- danbruc 2y ago
  At the cost of a huge increase in complexity and maintenance costs, that is the trade-off.

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

It drives me bonkers that when I hit the Windows key and type "bash", the first suggestion is always "Git Bash", which I have never used, when I truly want it to just run "bash" from WSL, which is not only a perfect text match, but actually gets used. But not only is "bash" not the first result, it's not even the second, third, or fourth. Between the "Best match" of "Git Bash" and the actual "bash" command is 10 web search results that I have zero interest in and have never had an interest in. I just don't get it. "bash" is an exact string match and always the result I choose. How is "Git Bash" still considered the "Best match"?

okasaki 2y ago
When I type in 'reboot' it gives me Reboot the movie in some online store. They have played us for fools.
high_pathetic 2y ago
It's the opposite for me. I don't use bash.exe on my Windows machine and it is the first match when I type "bash". "Git Bash" is the second best match. I have no other results. Windows 10 Home Edition 10.0.19045.

listenallyall 2y ago

I agree that MS built-in search sucks... but so do the default MacOS and Linux search implementations. I've said for a long time that Everything should be incorporated into core Windows, until then, at least it is available on Windows. Other OSes don't have an equivalent.