On searching
============

At trainings, sprints and other occasions I get to pair with a lot of
bright people.  What always fascinates me most is how they use tools
to be efficient.  What really saddens me, though, is when good
developers waste time with a repetitive task.  To me these
observations were particularly interesting because I always thought
I'm not using my tools very efficiently.

Take emacs, for example.  I use it, but I hardly use as many features
and shortcuts as most others do.  For instance, I don't use
auto-completion (I like to think I can type fast enough) nor do I know
the keyboard shortcut for everything ("what was it again, Elbow +
left-eyebrow RETURN toenail?").  So yes, you'll have to make
trade-offs between using tools and doing things yourself.
Nevertheless, I think it's a good idea to encourage people to use some
on-board tools.  One of the best tools that a computer can offer you,
I think, is searching.  So what I'm trying to tell you in this article
is:

**Let the computer find things for you!**

My mom and dad use the computer a lot.  And because they grew up with
traditional filing strategies such as cabinets, binders and folders,
they'll recreate the same structure on the file system.  Naturally,
when they want to find something, they'll open folder after folder
until they've found the document they were looking for.

When I, on the other hand, want to find a file I open Spotlight and
type some text from that file.  It doesn't even take a second and it
finds emails just as much as events from my calendar.  And it always
finds the stuff.  If it doesn't find stuff, it's not there.  So it's
much more reliable than I ever would be.  And what's nicer, I don't
have to be so anal about filing everything away in the right folder.
I've stopped filing the a good percentage of my emails into folders
because Apple Mail's search feature is so freaking fast (especially
since the Leopard upgrade).

So searching is a great way to deal with unstructured data.
Structure, in fact, becomes less important with good searching
capabilities.  Where was that PDF article on Supersymmetry that I read
the other day? Was it sent to me via email? Did I download it from
somewhere? Fact is, I couldn't care less as long as I can find it
*right now*.  Not having to first go through my emails, then my
browser's download folder means I save valuable time when I need it
again in a hurry.

Thus searching can make your work quite efficiently, especially when
you're a software developer, I think. Here are three examples of where
searching can make a programmer's work quite a bit more efficient:

* Use ``grep`` when looking for a particular piece of code (e.g. when
  looking for the definition of a method, grep for ``def foo``).  Do I
  need to explain this? I hope not.  I have no idea what people do on
  Windows, I suppose they use something built into their editor.
  Either way, don't try to manually search a large codebase, it will
  cost you hours.

* Use your editor's search feature to look for a particular piece of
  code in a file.  Sounds trivial, I know, but do a little
  self-experiment and watch what you do when you already know exactly
  what you're looking up in a particular file, say, the ``Foo`` class.
  What I do, is this: I don't bother taking a look around.  I hit
  ``Ctrl+S`` in my emacs and start typing ``class Foo``.  Heck, I even
  use the search feature to navigate *within* the same file.  Nothing
  can position the cursor as exactly as a quick search.  Except the
  mouse, perhaps.  So ok, using the search feature for navigation only
  works if you are a quick typist, and you'll also want an editor that
  does progressive searching (searching as you type) and none of that
  "Search Next" stuff.  But you know what, when you have a web browser
  that can do this as well, like say Firefox, finding important stuff
  in web pages can be just as quick.  Just start typing the text and
  it'll be highlighted instantly.

* Use bash's ability to search the command history when repetitively
  using commands on the command line.  Don't bother hitting the *Up*
  key for a 100 times, trying to find that hugely complicated command
  you typed in two hours ago.  Hit ``Ctrl+R``, start typing parts of
  the command and it'll appear as you type.  Didn't know this feature
  yet? Ain't it cool? Will it save you time? Maybe.  Will it save you
  much aggrevation? Quite probably.

I'm sure this list can be extended.  My advice is, as soon as you find
yourself repetitively looking for something, ask yourself if and how
it could be sped up with an automated search.

There's also a nice corollary: If you want to make your own
applications user-friendly, fit them with efficient and easy-to-use
searches.  I know that's highly non-trivial, but it's well worth it.
Plone's live search for instance is awesome, and I wish many other
large websites had it as well.

Lastly, here's a little anecdote that inspired me to write about this
searching topic in the first place.  Probably the best search business
out there is Google.  Their web, image, etc. searches are impressive,
but I think one of their greatest search toys is Google Maps because
it understands unstructured information as entered by humans and puts
some structure in it.

Anyway, the anecdote:

The other day I needed the address of Sixt, a rental car company in
Germany, in a city called Kassel.  I could've opened the browser, gone
to the Yellow Pages website, entered "sixt" into the form field for
the business type or name and "kassel" for the location, and with some
luck I would have gotten the address.  With Google Maps, I open the
browser to "maps.google.de" and just enter "sixt kassel" into the one
and only text field.  And voila, I get the address and telephone
number of the Sixt office in Kassel (and as a byproduct, really, a map
of the place).

It's the same with Google Maps Directions.  Most other systems will
make you enter the start and end location using several input fields
each.  You'll have to type in the street into one input field, the
postal code in yet another and the town in a third.  And if you're
crossing countries, by God, don't forget to select the right one from
a huge drop-down list.  Not so with Google Maps.  Just two input
boxes, one each for start and end location.  When you type in "Rome"
to "London", it knows you're not travelling from Rome, Indiana to
London, Ohio.  What's more, you can just copy'n'paste an address from
anywhere into Google Maps, it will understand it.

Coming back to my original point of letting the computer do the
searching for you: Having Google Maps find you a business address may
not be that impressive (apart from the way it just "groks" your
input).  What's **really** impressive is that it'll find the things
you're looking for *close* to some location.  Let's say, for instance,
I was stuck in the beautiful town of Torgau, Saxonia, Germany and
needed a rental car.  "sixt torgau" is what I'd type into Google Maps,
and voila, it finds the closest Sixt stations which aren't in Torgau
at all.  The best thing is, I don't even have to work out myself which
one's the closest.  Just use Google Maps Directions from "Torgau" to
"sixt torgau" and I get list of the closest Sixt stations sorted by
distance.

Of course, the same thing works with airports, Starbucks cafes, and
just about anything that's on Google Maps.  Personally I find the fact
that I don't have to go to various different websites to look for,
say, all airports in Saxonia, then figure out their distances to
Torgau just to see which one's the closest, incredibly cool.  In fact,
I think I'd like to see quite a few more DWIM (do what I mean)
applications out there, and just for the fun of it, I think I'm going
to write one myself.