[avionicsguy]

This should probably be a separate submission but why is search so bad everywhere?

- Confluence: Native search is horrible IME

- Microsoft Help (Applications): .chm files Need I say more.

- Microsoft Task Bar: Native search okay and then horrible beyond a few key words and then ... BING :-(

- Microsoft File Search: Even with full disk indexing (I turned it on) it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SSD. What's going on there?

- Adobe PDFs: Readers all versions. What? You mean you want to search for TWO words. Sacrilege. Don't do it.

Seriously though with all the interview code tests bubble sort, quick sort, bloom filters, etc. Why can't companies or even websites get this right?

And I agree with other commenters as far as Google, Bing, DDG, or other search sites it's been going down hill but the speed of uselessness is picking up.

The other nagging problem (at least for me) is that explicit searches which used to yield more relevant results now are front loaded with garbage. If I'm looking for datasheet on an STM (ST Microsystems) Chip and I start search with STM as of today STM is no longer relevant (it is, meaning it shows up after a few pages). But wow it seems like the SEOs are winning but companies that use this technique won't get my business.

[jborichevskiy]

Or MacOS Spotlight. Good lord. Most common occurrence: searching for Telegram, an app I have open 24/7 and interact with dozens of times a day.

CMD+Space

"T": LaTeXIT.app (an app I have used fewer than a dozen times in two years)

"E": LaTeXIT.app

"L": Telegram.app

"E": Electrum.app (how on earth??)

"G": telemetry.app (an app which cannot even be run)

"RAM" : Telegram

Similar experience searching for most apps, files, and words. It's horrendous.

MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

[exadeci]

Yeah I never understood that, why don't they order it by usage frequency? They have those metrics as they introduced Screen Time

[kops]

Anything Microsoft other than Office+outlook sucks. I don't know about azure though as I have not endured it yet.

Adobe wants to have you by your balls the moment you install their installer :-) I keep a separate computer for Adobe stuff just for that reason. Actually to run some MS junk too.

>Seriously though with all the interview code tests bubble sort, quick sort, bloom filters, etc. Why can't companies or even websites get this right?

I have see some of the stinkiest stuff created by people who will appear smartest in any test these companies can throw at them. Some people are always gambling/gaming and winging it. They leave a trail...unfortunately.

[IanSanders]

I envy your luck if you think office and outlook don't suck! Performance and reliability is terrible from my experience.

[kops]

Performance and reliability is indeed terrible. It is a mystery that a word processor crashes so often and take 10s of seconds just to quit. But the fact is that they get the job done and I haven't seen any decent alternatives to word, excel and for that matter even outlook. If you know something reasonably close, then please share.

[erklik]

> - Microsoft File Search: Even with full disk indexing (I turned it on) it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SSD. What's going on there?

I use this software utility called Search Everywhere, its surprisingly good, fast and fairly accurate most of the times :)

[klingonopera]

> - Microsoft File Search: Even with full disk indexing (I turned it on) it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SSD. What's going on there?

Does turning it off speed it up? I think disk indexing (the way Windows does it) is a remnant from HDD times, and might make things worse when used together with a modern SSD.

> Adobe PDFs: Readers all versions. What? You mean you want to search for TWO words. Sacrilege. Don't do it.

If you're just viewing and searching PDFs (and don't have to fill out PDF forms on a regular basis), check out SumatraPDF. Fastest PDF reader on Windows I've come accross so far.

[kortex]

> it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SSD. What's going on there?

What is going on there? I'm working on a file system indexer in golang and to walk and parse extension to a mimetype runs at several thousand images a second, over NFS. Windows is full of lots of headscratchers "why is this taking so long?"

[sj4nz]

My gut feeling is search is bad everywhere because no one provides a pure-text API to the content. Cleaning data is hard and its easier to chuck in all the text blasted off an HTML page than to exclude everything non-signal.

I have no answers for Microsoft File Search, it never returns any results for me, I wonder if they even tested it sometimes.

[exadeci]

With Google you can use their search operators to find some relevant content and I wish more search engine would support the minus (-) to ignore content with certain keywords.

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/