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Why is the search functionality on sites like Reddit, really low quality? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by pexavc@lemmy.world to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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I wanted to ask a technical questions, maybe high level, on why sites may have bad search and what the bottlenecks might be in almost never updating such in years. Was there something in the original development of the stack that is affecting progressive updates around the feature, how should one approach "Search" then in this case? Or is it simply a management issue.

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[-] palebluethought@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

There are "off the shelf" systems, for a sufficiently broad interpretation of "off the shelf." But they are not cheap (requiring probably a dedicated team just to properly configure and maintain, and probably also requiring significant rearchitecturing of your application's data), and are usually still quite shitty even after all that.

Search is just very, very hard. Much harder than even experienced devs who have not worked in the area appreciate.

Source: I am a dev on a major search engine. No, not that one, but one you have definitely used many times.

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
25 points (96.3% liked)

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