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What are alternative to searching using web search engines? (programming.dev)

submitted 9 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) by cactus_head@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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For most use cases, web search engines are fine. But I am wondering if there are alternative ways to finding information. There is also the enshittification of google and tbh most(free) search engines just give google search result

Obviously, the straight answer is just asking other people, in person or online, in general forums or specialised communities

Libraries are good source too but for those of is that don't have access to physical libraries, there free online public libraries(I will post the links for those that I found below)

Books in general, a lot of them have reference to outside materials.

So, I been experimenting with an AI chat bot(Le chat), partially as life coach of sorts and partially as a fine tuned web search engine. To cut to the chase, its bad. when its not just listing google top results it list tools that are long gone or just makes shit up. I was hoping it to be a fine tuned search engine, cuz with google, if what you want is not in the top 10 websites, your on your own.

So yeah, that all I can think of. Those are all the routes I can think of for finding information and probably all there is but maybe I missed some other routes.

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 31 minutes ago)

It does way more than that.

I have it write scripts in 30 seconds that would take me 2 days to write and verify.

I can quickly parse through what it writes (takes me about a minute) to verify it hasn't done anything wonky, then test it in a VM I use for testing my own scripts.

It does this because the question I ask is very clear and explicit: exact script language/version, exact input, exact output, how the script should flow, what commenting should look like. It takes me about 1 minute to write a good question like this.

I've setup Projects in it with specific rules so I don't have to state those rules every time - I have one for each scripting language. I've saved that definition so when I update the rules I have a local definition for reuse or share with my peers.

For informational searches I have it provide source links automatically - I have a lot of general knowledge so whenever it produces something that doesn't sit right I will steelman the information. It's surprising what it can come up with this way.

My friends say "you like to argue with it" - well sometimes arguing is necessary.

Haha, downvoters. What a joke.