> People never really read documentation before.

The heck you talking about? How do you think we wrote software for the last 50 years?

californical 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah lol it’s basically the only reliable way to know how things work. Pre-AI, I read documentation for libraries that I used almost every day.

And now with AI I’m using it to fact check Claude. And still reading it for myself to understand why other peoples code is written a certain way. It’s basically the most important thing to reference when coding.

Sure today Claude can just read the library code and tell you what a function does or how to do something. But it still won’t tell you why something is a certain way or won’t figure out specifically-designed usage patterns as reliably as the author telling you “this is an example of doing x”

▲

phatskat 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I really appreciated a friend reaching out to me with some PHP questions today. It was, to me, fairly basic but he was having a hard time grokking the documentation vs reading what his coworker wrote (some code using output buffering).

I brushed up on the docs since I haven't touched it in a couple years, explained my understanding of the ob_* functions, and gave him a very brief demo on a PHP playground.

He could have asked any LLM to tell him what that chunk of code did, and to explain the three functions, and instead he reached out to me. That felt _good_. Talking shop has always been a good way for me to form connections, because the pressure to socialize becomes task-oriented and you start to learn about how people think and feel, and that opens up easier paths for actual connection. It was nice.

Just like the Old Internet still exists - niche websites, mailing lists, probably a BBS or two (likely more right?), the pre-LLM world will trudge on, for a time. I hope LLMs actually lead to good things for people in the long run, and for now I personally will remain sparse in my usage of them.

	▲	WD-42 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Where do you work? Sounds nice!

▲

stevemk14ebr 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

only reliable way to know how things work is to reverse engineer them

	▲	californical 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But that’s my point, it’ll tell you how things work. In libraries I’m using, you can just read the code yourself. You need the documentation to know why certain things work a particular way, or to know why some relationships or methods are the way they are

▲

Vegenoid 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My absolute greatest skill in my career, that has consistently set me apart from my peers, is that I read documentation thoroughly.

It is shocking how much of a differentiator this is. You will discover that the software you’re already using is much more capable than you realized.

	▲	jtfrench 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The good news is your attention to actually reading and understanding documentation will differentiate you more and more as others (short-sighted, IMO) outsource understanding to an LLM.

▲

bee_rider 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Copy past the example code, then tweak until it breaks? If we were meant to read documentation, not reading it would cause a compiler error!

▲

Barrin92 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

when you start to internalize that these kinds of statements are an indication of how the average developer of the last 10-15 years operated the adoption rate of AI makes a lot more sense

	▲	WD-42 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is extremely depressing, I think I'm coming around to the realization that you may be right and I've been naive my entire career.

▲

groundzeros2015 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A small percentage of engineers