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Comment by markbnj | Hacker News Reader

Google is certainly a 100% essential tool for programming. I use it constantly, every day, and I am sure basically every single developer does the same. The most essential point in the post, imo, is that on any given project you have to wade through the details of dozens of components and tools. There's only so much room in the average brain.

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Google? No. A search engine? I'd say the vast majority of developers use one for some part of their job, yes

May I ask you what other search engines are you referring to?

Personally, I use DDG. Others may use bing, my point was to buck the Kleenex-ation of Google.

I don't Google things, or DDG things. I search for things

Right, agreed, "search engine" is what I should have said, although I suspect that even among developers Google search would be the heavy winner in terms of use.

I use DDG on my non-work machines. Google is better at finding stuff for programming, particularly the random error messages.

I've tried to use DDG for programming but I've found that Google's efficiency is just too good to make DDG worthwhile. I guess I've decided to take the privacy hit in regards to developing activities.

What are up searching for that ddg doesn't work? I find myself usually knowing sort of where to look, and often using !bangs or the site: limiter

you can use DDG as a default search engine, and search in google when you want by adding the "g!" flag to your query. it will kick you over to a non(less?)-tracked version of Google.

and you might find DDG is much better for devs. they have built in language guides and various other conveniences.

I'd like to recommend http://searx.me/.

It shows results from various different search engines which you can choose from.

Google provides me with the best results, by far, compared to Bing or DDG. So yeah, Google.

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