As with many of the other commentors here, I wonder how many programmers truly believe these things. Maybe as recently as the 90s or 2000s. Maybe developers who are fresh out of school.
But we've had search engines as a major part of our lives for about two decades now. Most of us use one at least daily. We're familiar with the complexities of search engines and how they differ from simply searching a document for an exact string or even a regular expression. Many programmers like me work with tools like analytics and log aggregators that expose the complexities of search to us in a way that's more intimate than the veneers of Google and Amazon.
Maybe I'm just lucky in that my experiences have dispelled these notions of search being easy or simple. But I hope I'm not alone.
Also, there's a disparity between what search is and what your users expect. Technically, I could make a really simplistic "search engine" that amounts to a SQL LIKE query. It may not be good or what users might expect coming from Google/Amazon/etc, but it would be a search engine. (Oops. Looks like my pedant hat slipped back on when I wasn't looking.)
But we've had search engines as a major part of our lives for about two decades now. Most of us use one at least daily. We're familiar with the complexities of search engines and how they differ from simply searching a document for an exact string or even a regular expression. Many programmers like me work with tools like analytics and log aggregators that expose the complexities of search to us in a way that's more intimate than the veneers of Google and Amazon.
Maybe I'm just lucky in that my experiences have dispelled these notions of search being easy or simple. But I hope I'm not alone.
Also, there's a disparity between what search is and what your users expect. Technically, I could make a really simplistic "search engine" that amounts to a SQL LIKE query. It may not be good or what users might expect coming from Google/Amazon/etc, but it would be a search engine. (Oops. Looks like my pedant hat slipped back on when I wasn't looking.)