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Comment by pknerd | Hacker News Reader

41 upvotes is a solid proof that people found it easier to navigate thru the OP's site than official docs.

Such a tragedy.. while the Python docs are excellent, they just aren't _nice_. They always feel like Microsoft chm files from the 90ies.

And their SEO is terrible, I've started to preface all python searches with 'site:python.org' to not end up on crappy monetization blogs..m

A good search engine should be able to surface the official docs of a programming language, when you search for things that are clearly part of those docs. I don't see why the official Python docs have to get into the business of SEO. If they set their sites' metadata attributes in a responsible way, there is nothing more they should be obligated to do.

> I've started to preface all python searches with 'site:python.org'

You might find DevDocs to be useful: https://devdocs.io/

Or, open the Python docs in your favorite browser, bring the omnibar into focus, and click the little button at the bottom of it to add the Python documentation to your list of available search engines.

In your browser's settings, you can set the shortcut for this search engine as "@python"

Now whenever you're searching, just start typing @python, hit tab to complete, and then type your search term.

I use this all the time in Firefox, and I'm 90% sure it works in Chrome, too.

> 'site:python.org'

If you use DuckDuckGo as your primary search engine, you can use `!py` for the Python 2 docs, and `!py3` for Python 3.

Most sites are more easily searched via an external engine restricted to the appropriate domain. E.g., if I search "python object model" I expect to find this [0] lovely reference. I misremembered the exact title, but ddg, bing, and google all have it as one of the first results, depending on your search personalization profile. It's #17 in the docs' built-in search engine accessed through !py3.

More importantly, in that custom search, it's behind the datetime module (which "models" some time-related behavior), the ssl module (which has a multiplexing "model" for wrapping socket "objects"), and many other results that are just stdlib modules with no consideration for the fact that the query doesn't seem to be asking about specific APIs or modules.

It's not a great search phrase, and writing a proper search engine is hard, but when I use other tools (e.g., binding !py in qutebrowser's search customization to a ddg search with the site:docs.python.org restriction) I don't have to spend any time crafting a perfect query and still get exactly the results I want.

[0] https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html

> when I use other tools (e.g., binding !py in qutebrowser's search customization to a ddg search with the site:docs.python.org restriction)

I think we have bit of a miscommunication here.

I'm well aware of the advanced capabilities of various search engines - in fact, Google's removal of some of those around the time Google+ came out is what caused me to start looking for other search engines.

Anyhow, while DuckDuckGo supports the `site:<url>` syntax, bangs are different, as they take you to the third-party site's search itself instead of providing a list of results on DDG.

Here's the list of all supported bang commands: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

I agree.

I was noting that 1st-party search is often lacking, and you can build that same bang-syntax idea into your browser as a configuration option. In QuteBrowser it's literally a bang, and in other options usually it's triggered by a space after the identifier.

> And their SEO is terrible, I've started to preface all python searches with 'site:python.org' to not end up on crappy monetization blogs..m

That's a problem with your tools, not the Python docs. Use a better search engine.

Then those people would probably enjoy reading Fluent Python: Clear, Concise, and Effective Programming 2nd Edition, as it explains the Python Data Model in depth and will make you understand the dunder methods and the official docs!

Not necessarily. Tons of people using Python aren't even aware of the Python docs. The data model page is my favourite page of the whole Python docs and every dev should at least know of its existence. The OP does not link to the original page so doesn't help in this respect.

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