this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Haha, nope. The links points to a table of contents after which you are on your own. The right link should point to a specific page instead, but the problem here is that postres docs are poorly optimized for search engines. If you click on the top link from google, you would see there's a notice that the page is outdated, with a link to a current version, but said link is dead. It's not an issue I've ever experienced with mysql docs for example.

And yes, w3schools, despite how terrible it is, is still above the official docs because it is more popular with newbies. I remember a time when I just started, I preferred sites like it, because they were simple and on point, rather than technically correct and comprehensive like the official docs are. If you forgot the feeling, try learning math on wikipedia (assuming you don't have a math degree).

For the rest I cannot argue. Generated/AI shit is indeed ruining the internet and search engines giving up and joining them isn't helpful either.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

After which ctrl+f " in" takes you to the correct chapters. I do agree that a direct link would be more helpful.
And for learning postgresql I agree it isn't very helpful - using their tutorial links, w3schools or something like udemy if you prefer video format is the way to go in that use case.

I remember back when you were told to learn to work with the documentation, not memorize it, because you will always have access to it as a reference. Maybe bookmarking reference books/documentation will make a come back as the search engines degrade.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Surely the word 'in' would appear countless times out of context on the table of contents.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You can press alt-w though to only show full word matches

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

" in" appears 25 times on the page to be exact, with 16 of those being in the table of contents and 9 being in the text afterwards.
"in" appears 54 times, as you know end up hitting "string" and so on.

Had I known that the functions table of contents was as short as it is I would probably have just scrolled.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

This is partly why I prefer Firefox's implementation of the find feature - it allows case-sensitive search while Chrome does not support it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Trying to learn math on Wikipedia is an endless Sisyphean nightmare just trying to understand the first word in an unfamiliar vocabulary.