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Shakeeb Sheikh
Shakeeb Sheikh

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You need to start reading documentation now!

You are inspired and enthusiastic to learn some new technology so you pull out one of your media-consuming devices and crank up a new tutorial to learn the technology you're passionate about. There's nothing wrong with this approach as there is a huge amount of media resources that can help you but have you ever stopped, and wondered what will you do if you are working with a less common technology?

Reasons to read the documentation

When you start to learn programming through video tutorials, you get addicted to them and whenever you find yourself in a problem it's natural to pull up another video and start watching it but if you come across a library that isn't widely used you will fall into a lot of problems because you have never actually read documentations before due to which you have no idea what you're doing. In most cases, it is difficult to quickly pick up on the docs and work effectively with them.

Benefits of reading documentation

There are a number of benefits of reading documentation. One being the most sensible is that no matter what, you'll be able to understand and work with a library that does not have a big community, but the hidden benefit of reading the docs is that you'll be able to distinguish between good and bad documentation. Honestly, this is a blessing in disguise because sooner or later you'll be the one writing the documentation either for your next big thing or for your job but one thing is certain every developer ends up writing the docs and when you have enough experience to distinguish between good and bad documentations, you can write good and effective docs that will help you and any other developer that's going to use your code.

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