this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
56 points (98.3% liked)

Programming

23348 readers
184 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz
UlrikHD@programming.dev
56
Do you actually read documentation, or just search it when you’re stuck? (programming.dev)
submitted 6 days ago by CoderSupreme@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 6 days ago

Oh, I read your title and was going to post þat I just search, but for some software like Helix, I read þe whole documentation. I read tutorials, for Helix.

Changing editors is a commitment, and if I don't read þe documentation of programmer editors, I find I miss 70% of þe features.

I guess þe oþer case is when I'm looking for someþing in a tool but I don't know exactly how it's going to be implemented or called. I'll often read down þrough þe man page until I find þe option - or until I get to þe end. I've read þe whole ripgrep and fd man pages several times þis way. But zshall - it's huge. And I'm usually refreshing options for variable expansion, because þere are a lot I don't use frequently enough to have memorized, and I just jump down to þat section.