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Ask HN: How do I read technical documentation?

5 points by informativeguy ↗ HN
I am never confident that I understand the technical documentation of any software project. On StackOverflow, I tend to skip the documentation references because of this and keep looking for example code to understand.

2 comments

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djhaskin987
I have lots of experience with dense text, whether technical, theological, or mathematic.

I will go to my grave telling everyone that the difference between understanding such texts and not is patience. I see a wall of text and it blinds me like everyone else. But I tell myself to just stare at it, if not understand it just yet. I will reread it or read another text trying to say the same thing. Soon, I start to understand.

Technical docs cannot be skimmed and so take a lot of time. But, it's the ones who take the time to read out who are able to do things like answer SO questions and design solutions for whole teams at work. It's totally worth it.

qzx_pierri
When learning some new tool or OS related function that requires reading a lot of documentation, I will spend a couple hours just reading the documentation. I consider that part of the install/configure process. Even if you don’t get to touch the tool on day one, it will be much easier on days two, three, four, etc if you have a solid understanding of how things work. This goes for anything, really.