this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
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Programming

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Do you actually read documentation, or just search it when you’re stuck? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 week ago by CoderSupreme@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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I’ve been switching from Vim to Helix recently. I did the built-in tutor, and whenever I need to configure something, I look it up in the docs. The problem is, I only find what I already know to look for. Without reading the documentation more broadly, I don’t really know what I can configure in the first place.

So I’m curious, do you sit down and read documentation to understand a tool, or do you just search it when you hit a specific problem?

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[–] realitista@lemmus.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If it's something I will be using a lot and in depth (such as your editor case), it's worth RTFM. For other stuff just try to find the bit I need. It also depends to some degree how similar it is to other stuff I've used before. I may be able to grok a lot of stuff intuitively if it's similar to stuff I've done elsewhere. For instance jumping between versions of Unix was like this.