The most comprehensive tool I've built so far was a JSONPath playground [0] when I was working on a game where I found myself writing a fair bit of JSONPath (well, JSONPath Plus specifically) expressions by hand and wanted to be able to test them out in the same way that I would on regex101 when writing regular expressions.
I realistically probably would have only saved myself less than an hour of crafting those expressions if the tool had already existed (with this level of detail, there are lots of many simpler ones already for it), but I would have spent a solid 40-50 hours of bouncing between manually crafting and writing detailed instructions to direct the agents to get this tool there.
I work at SerpApi [0], and we offer a free tier that may serve your needs if you're just looking to do programmatic searches periodically.
Much of the reason people go with a service like ours is because of the difficulty with rolling your own reliable solution. Happy to answer any questions you might have as well!
The most recent project I’ve been working through has been a tool for JSON query evaluation and debugging [0] inspired by how easy regex101 is to use.
I couldn’t find any that were as nice or as powerful to use for writing JSONPath queries, so instead of spending an hour crafting and testing them manually, I spent >40 hours building this tool to save myself half an hour.
I've got a few things on my plate that I bounce between building for fun:
1. A point-and-click adventure game: making it with incredibly heavy technical constraints "just because"
2. A coding puzzle game of rapidly escalating difficulty
3. Part of #2 had me needing to craft some JSON Path queries and I felt like there wasn't anything nice to build and test them with, so I built this tool for it (inspired by the amazing regex101): https://jsonpath101.com/
4. A website where I write about text-based browser games
I don't mean that users are following the links to `acme.com` and `demo.com` type domains in documentation; I mean that bots are likely finding and following many links to them because of their widespread use in documentation.
If you search for `site:github.com "acme.com"` in Google, you'll find numerous instances of the domain being used in contrived links in documentation as an example of how URLs might be structured on an arbitrary domain and also in issues to demonstrate a fully qualified URL without giving away the actual domain people were using.
This means that numerous links are pointing to non-existent paths on `acme.com` because of the nature of how people are using them in documentation and examples.
I suspect part of the issue is that people are still using things like `acme.com` and `demo.com` as an example domain in their documentation and tests instead of relying on `example.com` which is reserved exactly for this purpose [0]
SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior to Senior Fullstack Engineer multiple positions | Customer Success Engineer | Hiring Coordinator | Python/Ruby/PHP/Js/Rust/Cotlin/C#/Crystal/Nim/Elixir Developer Advocate positions | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | ONSITE or FULLY REMOTE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US
SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google Images, Bing, Baidu, and a lot more.
Our current stack is Ruby, Rails, MongoDB, and React.JS. We are looking for more Junior and Senior FullStack Engineers. We have an awesome work environment: We are a remote first company (before Covid!). We do continuous integration, continuous deployments, code reviews, code pairings, profit sharing, and most of communication is async via GitHub.
We value super strongly transparency, do open books, have a public roadmap, and contribute to the EFF.
SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior to Senior Fullstack Engineer multiple positions | Customer Success Engineer | Hiring Coordinator | Python/Ruby/PHP/Js/Rust/Cotlin/C#/Crystal/Nim/Elixir Developer Advocate positions | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | ONSITE or FULLY REMOTE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US
SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google Images, Bing, Baidu, and a lot more.
Our current stack is Ruby, Rails, MongoDB, and React.JS. We are looking for more Junior and Senior FullStack Engineers. We have an awesome work environment: We are a remote first company (before Covid!). We do continuous integration, continuous deployments, code reviews, code pairings, profit sharing, and most of communication is async via GitHub.
We value super strongly transparency, do open books, have a public roadmap, and contribute to the EFF.
SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior to Senior Fullstack Engineer positions | Customer Success Engineer | and more... | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | FULLY REMOTE or ONSITE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US
SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google Images, Bing, Baidu, and a lot more.
We are still hiring - we have so much work and we're after great people to help out! I only started at SerpApi late last year myself and can't recommend it enough.
We do continuous integration, continuous deployments, code reviews, code pairings, profit sharing, and most of communication is async via GitHub.
Our current stack is Ruby, Rails, MongoDB, and React.JS. We are looking for more Junior and Senior FullStack Engineers. We have an awesome work environment: We are a remote first company (before Covid!).
We very strongly value transparency, do open books, have a public roadmap, and contribute to the EFF.
When you apply, please mention that you saw David's post on HackerNews.
If you've previously applied and didn't make it through, please feel free to reapply if it's been a while and you think you would make a better fit than previously.
You can contact me at david at serpapi.com if it's been a few days and you think your application may have fallen through the cracks.
Given the large delta between what you've experienced and what I can find on my side, the only thing I can think is that your application has been handled outside of our standard process (perhaps directly with someone?) and/or that the SaaS we use to manage the process isn't surfacing you in search.
The code challenge linked has been used for the software engineer candidates long before I began at SerpApi and, in the spirit of transparency, candidates have been directed to make their submissions via a PR to the public repository since almost our earliest employees, e.g. Ilya's submission can be found here: https://github.com/serpapi/code-challenge/pull/6
Can you please forward the email chain(s) to me at david at serpapi.com so I can look into it? Even if you've withdrawn from the process, I would very much appreciate having a copy of these to see what's gone wrong.
We're always looking to improve where we can to reduce any gaps in the process and to make sure no applications slip through the cracks.
I can't find any calls/interviews with your name and also can't find any submission from you on our code challenge[0] (which is the only take home task that we ask devs to do), but it may just mean that you've applied under a different name and GitHub profile than you have listed on the website in your about page/your HN username.
If you can reach out to me at david at serpapi.com and provide me with some more detail about your application I can try and find out what's happened here.
SerpApi | https://serpapi.com | Junior to Senior Fullstack Engineer positions | Customer Success Engineer | Talent Acquisition Specialist | Based in Austin, TX but remote-first structure | Full-time | ONSITE or FULLY REMOTE | $150K - 180K a year 1099 for US or local avg + 20% for outside the US
SerpApi is the leading API to scrape and parse search engine results. We deeply support Google, Google Maps, Google Images, Bing, Baidu, and a lot more.
Our current stack is Ruby, Rails, MongoDB, and React.JS. We are looking for more Junior and Senior FullStack Engineers. We have an awesome work environment: We are a remote first company (before Covid!).
We do continuous integration, continuous deployments, code reviews, code pairings, profit sharing, and most of communication is async via GitHub.
We very strongly value transparency, do open books, have a public roadmap, and contribute to the EFF.
I realistically probably would have only saved myself less than an hour of crafting those expressions if the tool had already existed (with this level of detail, there are lots of many simpler ones already for it), but I would have spent a solid 40-50 hours of bouncing between manually crafting and writing detailed instructions to direct the agents to get this tool there.
[0] https://jsonpath101.com/