Google and other discovery tools, like, say GitHub's internal search, try really hard to give you the thing you are looking for, and they are usually pretty good about it. But pretty good is where that ends. These engines rely on the same faulty metrics we try to remind people are faulty. GitHub stars are a very very very loose indicator of where to put your attention, and no metrics, however sophisticated, can give you the whole picture. Sometimes you just have to dig deeper.
There are absolutely gems on the second, third, millionth page of Google results. It's a company that has been on a two-decade-long mission to get us to trust the first page. I just want to remind you, that you should keep using your human brain, consider doing ten minutes of deeper research when you might have otherwise turned away after a minute.
If you don't keep your research skills sharp, you become much more susceptible to convincing yourself that the thing you are looking for does not exist. This causes unnecessary reinvention and can contribute to "not-invented-here" syndrome out of good intentions. There is a lot out there. Train yourself to always look deeper before turning away in haste.
Happy coding. â¤ï¸
Top comments (2)
Just Google'd for 'Improving your Google fu', well worth it :)
I frequently find keywords that provide much lower noise results in the first couple of pages of a search, especially technical terms and brands.
BTW: happy searching?
adding the unlimited_google for my tamper monkey helps a lot.