🔍 Searching the web
Tags: beginners, ai, github, webdev
Published: 2024-04-05 13:46:50

## Google

As a Developer that fights new problems every day you will most likely start out by Googling the issue or error code you encounter. Googling currently is the 1st step I personally take whenever I encounter an issue, but I think Copilot or other AI Chat bots might take the #1 spot soon!

To Google more efficiently you might want to learn about certain operators.

### Quotes

Quotes (`" "`) let you search for a exact match. This can be extremely useful for error codes, messages or when pinpointing exact version numbers.

### site:

By adding a `site:https://dev.to` to your search, this will only find results that come from the dev.to page! This can be super useful, e.g. when you want to look up documentation of a specific framework on their site, or want to specifically get stackoverflow articles.

### filetype: / ext:

Using the `filetype:pdf` or `ext:pdf` search you will only find PDF Files. This can sometimes be useful, but I don't use this very regularly.

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## YouTube

When you feel like Google does not provide the info you need or you need some more visual examples YouTube might be a nice source of information as well! Check the Likes / Comments on a Video to quickly check if it is a 'good' video. Skip over Videos that disabled comments, trust me :). Also check the description of those videos, there might be a CodeBlitz or GitHub link that allows you to quickly get the code shown in the video.

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## Copilot

If you have uncertainties about syntax or on how to do things within a framework that's known to the bot, I would check if it has a nice solution for you. The more input you give, the better the answer will be! Be as precise as possible about what inputs and outputs should look like, also provide an idea of how to achieve this if possible. Please be very careful with code provided by a bot, since it might not be correct. Also you should try to question the bot at any time! Don't copy stuff that you do not understand and also ensure that you do not introduce security issues by using AI.

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## GitHub

Using software tools that have a GitHub Repository is very common. They often provide documentation about how to install and use their software - read it! If you encounter any bugs or stumble across problems at some point, check their open and closed issues to find details about it. Sometimes there are known workarounds or solutions to your problem in the comment section. If you feel like you encountered a new problem, open an issue and provide test data for the maintainer to reproduce your issue. If you feel like you can solve it yourself - feel free to create a Pull Request.

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## Documentation

Many of us developers are lazy - I know, you don't want to hear it but if there is documentation, you should read it. It is written by the creator / maintainer of the software and often has detailed information about what the software provides and how to use it. Also, you should try and Document your code, yes I know it can be annoying but it's worth it, trust me.

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## StackOverflow

Our lord and savior StackOverflow. Most likely you will encounter this page rather sooner than later when googling for any issue in almost any programming language. People can explicitly ask questions about coding and (hopefully) get helpful answers.

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Did I miss anything? Where do you get your information from?