back to article GitHub code search redesign can't find many fans

GitHub introduced faster code search earlier this week though the accompanying interface revision and search options have left developers wishing for a way to return to the old version. Feedback posted over the past four days to a GitHub Community discussion of the new search experience has been largely dissatisfied, …

  1. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge

    Wossa beta, then?

    Disclaimer: I'm not a serious GitHub user. However, the quote carried by TFA indicates that these, umm, revisions were the subject of a "public beta". And here's me thinking that the entire purpose of a beta release is to determine the issues, prioritize them all the way from show-stopper to won't-fix, and then address that priority list until one has a decent release candidate, instead of doing the release anyway, and then "working through the issues". Maybe someone's bonus was on the line.

    1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: Wossa beta, then?

      With Microsoft, there's no such thing as a show-stopper. Just one more dead canary.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No mention of the two big outages this week?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Welcome to the new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft. Bummer, I was really hoping they had turned the corner.

  4. Rich 2 Silver badge

    MS - king of the anti-Midas touch

    I’m constantly surprised by how MS with all their enormous resources manage to turn everything they touch into utter shit.

    They are doing it with GitHub. They did it with Skype, plus several hundred more applications over their long and illustrious history.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MS - king of the anti-Midas touch

      Skype - definitely.

      Dear Microsoft. Please make the self-view frame possible to move across the screen, otherwise it is impossible to use Skype when 2 or more persons are in the view. One person is always hidden with the self-view. Also enable in settings making the size of the self-view smaller and maximally push it towards the corner.

      Another problem is having icons instead of text buttons (yes, Google is wrong making everything mono-chromatic. Let's not copy bad practice). It is hard to guess what is what. It slows down selection like hell. Everything in one drop-down menu is good.

      As for Github, I like the changes. But I am not a frequent user.

  5. jake Silver badge

    Poll questions

    What about those of us who don't use github, but tried it anyway?

    Conclusion: This new variation is unusable shit, and I still don't use github.

    Why did I bother trying it? Call me an eternal optimist.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Search only works on the default branch, and not across multiple branches., etc.

    Could it be motivated by making it harder to use to cut down on cost?

    Somebody on a free account could eat up a lot of CPU time. But reducing features in free is not an option.

    So by making people download the other-than-default branches to search them, the cost is shifted to the user.

    Whether that is really a net benefit to MS is another matter I can't judge.

    1. Robert Grant

      I found it really annoying that the search would bring back results from multiple branches. I generally didn't want that.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Selection Bias

    Fans don't usually search for complaint threads to voice their appreciation of a new feature.

    Personally, I've found the janky Ctrl+F behavior to be pretty annoying and the UI needs some work, but overall it's been a significant improvement. Previously if I wanted to search for code I would basically always jump into github.dev and do ctrl+shift+f. The new search has made it possible for me to avoid doing that.

  8. Sam Adams the Dog

    Poorly thought out UIs

    "The only good thing about this new UI, it has given me a reason to move off Github completely and to self-host with anything that doesn't have a poorly thought out UI."

    But there is nothing that doesn't have a poorly thought out UI.

  9. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    All the failings mentioned previously are poor. Half of them are basically no better than text search. A real code search tool should be able to undestand the structure of the language or runtime that is its querying. For example it should be able to find instances of a type, or references to a method by type and method signature and not simply a text search of the method name.

    1. Vincent Ballard
      FAIL

      If it can find anything at all in code then it's an improvement from the last time I tried to use code search in Github, a few weeks ago. I could literally copy the name of a type from a source file, paste it into the search box, search for it "in this repository", and it would tell me that there were zero instances of that string.

  10. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Windows

    Microsoft writing a search people don't like?

    Sounds like the new search in Visual Studio. Someone decided it was a good idea, removed the useful features and made it the default.

    To be fair, though, that's what Microsoft always do with new features. Now, where's my Word 2.0c disks?

  11. captain veg Silver badge

    What's it for?

    Serious question.

    What problem does Github solve?

    Supplementary question:

    For those of us developing closed source vertical apps and obliged by corporate policy to use it, what problem does Github solve?

    Meta-supplementary question: does Microsoft's involvement change the rationale?

    -A.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Missing capabilities, bugs, unloved interface decisions"

    We are the Borg. Resistance was futile. You have been assimilated.

  13. FatGerman

    What?

    Who's using GitHub's web interface to search and edit code? I push to it every day, the only time I've ever logged in via a browser was when I created the repository.

    Aren't Git enthusiasts always saying it's good because "everything's local"? Surely the editor you use to edit code - locally - can do search? Or are all these people the kind who still insist on using Vi because it's "cool"? Or am I missing out?

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