[akavel]

What benefits does it have over git grep, esp. if I'm using a monorepo? What new patterns/possibilities does it enable? Is it maybe speed somehow? (I assume it could then be more "live search/exploration"/rapid exploration than git grep - but OTOH wouldn't it require some slow reindexing after each change?)

[sqs]

For code search on a monorepo, Sourcegraph is often faster in UX and execution time for a lot of tasks. It's easier/faster to filter the results than `git grep`, you can see more on your screen, it's easier to jump to the full file, it's easier to see blame info for particular lines, etc.

Sometimes while coding you just need to find where something is so you can edit it or jump to it. In that case, your editor's search or `git grep` is definitely better. But when you're looking for example code, reviewing/reading code, or debugging code, it's often better to do it in a UI that's more optimized for those tasks than `git grep` and your editor.

And then Sourcegraph also has code intelligence, code host browser extension integrations, saved queries, etc., beyond the basic code search.

Google has a massive monorepo, and they have a similarly advanced code search system that they describe publicly. It's very well loved and frequently used by their developers. If you know any ex-Googlers (or ex-Facebookers, who have a similar system), ask them, and check out https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LQxLk4E3lrb3fIsVKlANu_pU....

BTW, Sourcegraph doesn't use an index for search. We heavily optimized the performance of searching an arbitrary revision that has never been indexed. So no slow reindexing after each change.