> you learned less about everything surrounding it.
I think one of the big acceleration points in my skills as a developer was when I moved from searching SO and other similar sources to reading the docs and reading the code. At first, this was much slower. I was usually looking for a more specific thing and didn't usually need the surrounding context. But then as I continued, that surrounding context became important. That stuff I was reading compounded and helped me see much more. These gains were completely invisible and sometimes even looked like losses. In reality, that context was always important, I just wasn't skilled enough to understand why. Those "losses" are more akin to a loss you have when you make an investment. You lost money, but gained a stock.
I mean I still use SO, medium articles, LLMs, and tons of sources. But I find myself just turning to the docs as my first choice now. At worst I get better questions to pay attention to with the other sources.
I think there's this terrible belief that's developed in CS and the LLM crowd targets. The idea that everything is simple. There's truth to this, but there's a lot of complexity to simplicity. The defining characteristic between an expert and a novice is their knowledge of nuance. The expert knows what nuances matter and what don't. Sometimes a small issue compounds and turns into a large one, sometimes it disappears. The junior can't tell the difference, but the expert can. Unfortunately, this can sound like bikeshedding and quibbling over nothings (sometimes it is). But only experts can tell the difference ¯\_(ツ)_/¯