Ask HN: Why doesn't anyone ever read the docs?

Most engineers I know rush to youtube or medium or some other outsourced interpretation of the docs that is far more scattered in info. I was wondering what made you (if you're one of the types that prefers medium/YT over the documentation) prefer these off-hand interpretations of a program rather than the one who created it ?

2. Documentation is written by super smart people designed the software... they tend to have a tough time relating to normal developers and especially beginners

3. Docs never provide enough examples. Stack overflow literally exists for this reason

4. Documentation is an after thought for most pieces of software (laravel is a notable example to the contrary - the docs are part of the software design for laravel), and not a forethought.

5. People just don't read period

6. Documentation usually has contrived examples, where other sources often have literally the think that you were trying to do (Users, Posts, Payments, Tags, etc)

Short list... but hopefully helpful

Users start fresh. If users had spent as much time as the one documenting they would probably love the documentation, but since they are new, the viewpoint differs.

Truly good and intelligent documentation tries to capture the mindset of the assumed reader.

Sometimes medium is better because it has examples. I want the direct answer to my problem, the one liner. I don’t have time to read a book/doc.

If you don't take time to read the entire manpage or at least skim through to find the optimal solution, then you're not experienced enough IMO. I understand the rush to come up with a quick win and amaze everyone, but the first quality I notice on senior engineers is that they were really slow in delivering solutions. The ROI would come up later when drawbacks were documented, the solution was well explained and most of the times elegant, hence no one would need to touch that part of system anytime soon and if someone did had to do so, he'd have a head-start.