I refer to documentation when I need to learn how to do individual things, and then once I'm starting to become comfortable with the library/software/whatever then I'll sit down in more depth and read through more of the documentation. At that point you have enough context to understand what's going on.
Ask HN: How to RTFM?
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#12It's pretty simple with modern tools. For example, I'm learning Angular at the moment. I needed to learn how to use an IF statement in the HTML code.
The first google result is a blog post [1] from some guy. It's helpful, but really dilutes the core material. So instead I just went directly to the angular docs [2]. This was straightforward and gave me the info I needed to know.
Now CLI manuals from tools created in the 80's and 90's? Those are trickier. I'm still trying to learn a good way to grok those tools, but so far blog posts and Stack Overflow have been better than the man files, in my experience.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#13I find the most detailed manual I can find on a thing and then I skim it, making note of chapter and paragraph headings.
90% of the benefit of a manual is knowing that a thing is possible the other 10% is the manual telling you how that thing is possible.
I do the same thing with man pages, I just scan down them, I don't care about the minutiae at that point but it's handy to know.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#14>if someone actually reads the manual Uh, I thought everyone does. >I don't see how manuals can be useful in the real sense I'm...not sure how you can say this. Maybe you mean, reading a manual cover-to-cover. I don't think "RTFM" means that. Don't read the whole thing if it's boring! But I find once I'm well into using/learning some piece of software, and want to know everything, reading the entire manual is fascina…
The projects that clearly care about good thorough documentation are relatively rare but worth their weight in gold.
One of my favourites is Symfony, their documentation is phenomenal (right up to the ability to generate a beautifully formatted ebook straight from the docs).
https://symfony.com/doc/current/index.html#gsc.tab=0
The structure is inviting, nicely thought out, makes it easy to get into from multiple points and well written.
Also I really appreciate they have a good "Best Practices" section, too many frameworks give you a lot of flexibility without any overarching "We suggest you structure it this way" which means that you can pick up two projects based on the 'same' framework and they bare little actual resemblance to each other.
That matters when you inherit someones codebase/decisions.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#15> Ask HN: How to RTFM?
(blinks)
Open to page one. Engage eyes. Parse words.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#16>if someone actually reads the manual Uh, I thought everyone does. >I don't see how manuals can be useful in the real sense I'm...not sure how you can say this. Maybe you mean, reading a manual cover-to-cover. I don't think "RTFM" means that. Don't read the whole thing if it's boring! But I find once I'm well into using/learning some piece of software, and want to know everything, reading the entire manual is fascina…
> > >if someone actually reads the manual
> Uh, I thought everyone does.
... have ... have you ever met another programmer?
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#17Read the documentation for what you're currently using and struggling with. Sometimes I peruse the documentation and discover new things I have never tried that I can try to make my life easier. It's a bit hard at first, but once you're used to it you can just read documentation and get work done. I also read the underlying source sometimes to get further insight.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#18I find that after you've picked up the basics, reference materials are usually the most useful part of documentation by far.
For programming languages I always add the standard library reference into my browser's search engines. For example, I can type "kt mutablelist" into my address bar to go straight to https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/?q=mutablelist&p=0.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#19Every time someone says 'read the manual', I weep for humanity.
When I open most manuals pages I may as well be reading 'ᐅᒥᐊᕐᔫᑉ ᐳᓪᓕᓕᒫᐸᒐ ᑕᑦᑕᕐᓂᖅ ᐊᒻᒪᔭᖅ'
It does nothing for me. I am seldom any smarter afterward.
These people don't understand there are different brain types, and only ~25% are read/write brain types.
Couple that with the fact that many in technology write in a broken, sterile form of English that any grammar correctly immediately flags as wrong.
No, the 'RTFM manual' people are typically extremely left-brained, analytical, black/white people who have no ability to see from others' point of, and often little desire to do so.
Re: Ask HN: How to RTFM?
#20I think reading software manuals is a waste of time. Unless if you do something wrong, you break something, it is much more efficient to just try to do a few examples and work with the tool, then when you need the manual, you read it. Just search on it what you need. I think it is impossible to read those things and still be ahead of the curve on what is happening with software and things in general. Very time ineffi…
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