Ada in polluted WWW searches

Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Dan'l Miller]

One of the complications of searching for solutions to challenges regarding Ada (as well as job postings needing Ada skills & experience) is the fact that Ada matches ADA, the initialism for both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the American Dental Association.  When searching for Ada, a vast treasure trove of topics for the physically handicapped and for dental/dentist topics appear in the search results.  Ada the programming language is in a distant 3rd place.

To rectify this, we should assure that every single WWW page and job posting (and social-media posting) has Ada83, Ada1983, Ada87, Ada1987, Ada9X, Ada95, Ada1995, Ada2005, Ada2007, Ada2012, Ada2020, or Ada202X in it somewhere, so that people can find it without needing to search for only Ada.

Indeed, because each era of Ada is so different philosophically,  we should •rarely• speak of Ada per se, because we rarely are speaking of all eras of the language at once.  We should default to saying “Ada95 & greater” instead of merely “Ada”, or “Ada83 & greater” instead of merely “Ada”, or “Ada2005 & greater” instead of merely “Ada”.  This rule of thumb will immediately drastically increase the ability to search for Ada-the-language on the WWW and in job postings without all the ADA pollution.

The Go community combats this problem via referring to their language as Golang.  Dart community likewise frequently refers to Dartlang.  Instead of contriving Adalang, we can can all resolve today to switch to utilizing non-colliding names for Ada that are already in daily usage in the Ada community ••at least once•• per WWW page, job posting, or social media posting instead of merely “Ada” nearly all the time.

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Luke A. Guest]

Dan'l Miller <optikos@verizon.net> wrote:
> One of the complications of searching for solutions to challenges
> regarding Ada (as well as job postings needing Ada skills & experience)
> is the fact that Ada matches ADA, the initialism for both the Americans
> with Disabilities Act and the American Dental Association.  When
> searching for Ada, a vast treasure trove of topics for the physically
> handicapped and for dental/dentist topics appear in the search results. 
> Ada the programming language is in a distant 3rd place.

Don’t not forget the places in America with the same name, I know of one in
Ohio but there is another somewhere else there.

Or Australian dentists.

> To rectify this, we should assure that every single WWW page and job
> posting (and social-media posting) has Ada83, Ada1983, Ada87, Ada1987,
> Ada9X, Ada95, Ada1995, Ada2005, Ada2007, Ada2012, Ada2020, or Ada202X in
> it somewhere, so that people can find it without needing to search for only Ada.

There’s not that many of them, tbh.


> The Go community combats this problem via referring to their language as
> Golang.  Dart community likewise frequently refers to Dartlang.  Instead
> of contriving Adalang, we can can all resolve today to switch to
> utilizing non-colliding names for Ada that are already in daily usage in
> the Ada community ••at least once•• per WWW page, job posting, or social
> media posting instead of merely “Ada” nearly all the time.
> 

Good luck getting recruitment agents doing that.

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Randy Brukardt]

"Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net> wrote in message 
news:ab228d07-e89a-40b5-a134-e4bc33ec5ace@googlegroups.com...
> One of the complications of searching for solutions to challenges
> regarding Ada (as well as job postings needing Ada skills & experience)
> is the fact that Ada matches ADA, the initialism for both the Americans
> with Disabilities Act and the American Dental Association.  When
> searching for Ada, a vast treasure trove of topics for the physically
> handicapped and for dental/dentist topics appear in the search results.
> Ada the programming language is in a distant 3rd place.

This problem was well known decades ago. Tom Moran and I built the Ada-wide 
search engine to "solve" this problem -- it indexes all known Ada sites. It 
doesn't work as well as it used to because a lot of sites have switched to 
HTTPS which we can't index yet. (I need to find some time to fix that; I 
have *soooo* much spare time ;-).

Anyway, you can find it on AdaIC or directly at
http://www.ada-auth.org/wide-search.html.

Note that the blurb for this on the ACAA home page says "Search many 
Ada-related web sites without getting results for dentists and dairymen."

                                                       Randy.

P.S. Irrelevant story: RRS briefly had an office in a building on Madison's 
west side (now demolished for a new freeway off-ramp) which had previously 
housed the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. When we were working in the 
ceiling to run cables or some such thing, we discovered that all of the roof 
beams has "ADA of WIS" written on them in black marker. Somehow seemed 
appropriate. :-)

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[gautier_niouzes]

Type "Ada programming" in the search box, eventually with quotes and a '+' sign first.

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> Tom Moran and I built the Ada-wide search engine to "solve" this
> problem -- it indexes all known Ada sites. It doesn't work as well as
> it used to because a lot of sites have switched to HTTPS which we
> can't index yet. (I need to find some time to fix that; I have *soooo*
> much spare time ;-).

Is the source for the indexing engine available?  Maybe somebody could
be tempted to submit a patch, such that it also can handle HTTPS.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
<URL: small-talk://work/hallway-meeting/...>

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Randy Brukardt]

"Jacob Sparre Andersen" <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk> wrote in message 
news:871se4rzm3.fsf@jacob-sparre.dk...
> Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> Tom Moran and I built the Ada-wide search engine to "solve" this
>> problem -- it indexes all known Ada sites. It doesn't work as well as
>> it used to because a lot of sites have switched to HTTPS which we
>> can't index yet. (I need to find some time to fix that; I have *soooo*
>> much spare time ;-).
>
> Is the source for the indexing engine available?  Maybe somebody could
> be tempted to submit a patch, such that it also can handle HTTPS.

Unfortunately, it's not. We built it out of spare parts laying around, and I 
never found time to figure out the licensing on those. Another job for the 
copious spare time. :-)

I do plan to work on that project this summer after the Lisbon ARG meeting 
(it's tied into a long-running project to get the various servers off of 
Windows, to use more modern hardware and not cost $$$).

                                                                    Randy.

Re: Ada in polluted WWW searches

[Paul Rubin]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:
>> Is the source for the indexing engine available?  Maybe somebody could
>> be tempted to submit a patch, such that it also can handle HTTPS.
> Unfortunately, it's not....

Rather than patching the engine, you could put it behind a reverse proxy
that handles https and passes http through.  Nginx, apache, pound etc
can all do that.