Doug Turnbull

Doug Turnbull's personal blog and essays
https://softwaredoug.com/ (RSS)
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Turns out an AI-only twitter is pretty boring
30 Dec 2024 | original ↗

I built AI-bot twitter and learned they like to argue about pumpkin spice lattes

Reflecting on 6 years of "AI Powered Search"
20 Dec 2024 | original ↗

The book AI Powered Search is out and I couldn't be more grateful to Trey Grainger and Max Irwin for having me on this journey

Preferring throwaway code over design docs
14 Dec 2024 | original ↗

If you have discipline to throw away your first idea, draft, throwaway PRs often drives more progress than a design doc.

Go from Python - initial impressions
10 Dec 2024 | original ↗

Some notes when you get into Go from Python for the fellow Go newb.

Your big company can't be a startup again.
3 Dec 2024 | original ↗

Large companies can't put the genie back in the bottle because to most employees, they don't have autonomy over their roles

Failing at an Elasticsearch 'full' phrase match
18 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Elasticsearch doesn't have a straight-forward way to match the 'full' field (all the tokens as a phrase).

RRF is Not Enough
3 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Reciprocal Rank Fusion, while a useful tool, doesnt magically make hybrid search relevant

Real life NDCG notebook
19 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A notebook showing the real decisions computing search evaluation stats

The hidden danger that kills search products
13 Oct 2024 | original ↗

The lack of objective definition of good search creates huge hazards when creating search, RAG, AI solutions

Stop avoiding conflict on your teams
25 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Avoiding conflict is the death knell of organizations that leads to a lack of progress and careers that implode.

Staff engineers exist in a system of patronage
11 Sept 2024 | original ↗

In reality, staff engineers aren't about 'company wide' impact but a system of patronage where managers reward behaviors they value

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