data-gathering.txt How to search stuff on the internet

Original Author: Sahil Gautam <printfdebugging@gmail.com>
Homepage: <https://printfdebugging.in/>
License: GNU GPL v2

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CONTENTS

    1. Collect Data Points                                 collect-data-points
    2. Filter Good Sources Out                                      filter-out
    3. Ask the Experts                                         ask-the-experts

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Collect Data Points                                        collect-data-points

    knowing what options are available out there is very important and it
    hurts a lot to later find out that there were better options which we
    simply didn't know of.

    one way of collecting data points is just by searching on some search
    engine and looking through the first few pages... but there is an issue
    with this approach. the results indexed on the top might be paid results,
    and from my experience, people barely look at the second page... very
    limited! and this differs from one SE to another. 

    reddit is a good place to start from, just type your query with reddit
    at the end, and a lot of relevant results will show up on the first
    results page itself.

    other than reddit, searching on social video platforms like youtube is
    also a good option. watching a few videos/tutorials on the topic helps one
    identify what's relevant now-a-days and what's not.

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Filter Good Sources Out                                             filter-out

    once we have a good idea of what's available, it's time to filter things
    out. we might want to skip the stuff not relevant anymore, or we might
    want to look into that first if we want to dive deep into a subject.

    the next step would be to repeat the first step but this time for the
    specific topics that interest you... repeat this process until you are
    left with action items like 'read that book', or 'watch some tutorials'.

    now it's time to get down to work, don't sleep on that! it's quite easy to
    keep searching for things to work on forever and never get anything done.
    it's better to search for a few action items and complete them, then
    search again and repeat...

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Ask the Experts                                                ask-the-experts

    it's good that we have a number of action items, but one needs to get them
    validated from the experts, the people who actually work with those
    things. reddit conversations, youtube videos sure help with it a little
    bit but they can be confusing too as one doesn't know who's an expert and
    who is not.

    asking on relevang irc channels is one of the best ways of getting the
    facts checked. once you ask a question, you get multiple responses each
    answering what you asked or checking/correcting what others' said. after
    a few dialoues, you would have an answer or the intelligence to find one
    by yourself.

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