I’ve been switching from Vim to Helix recently. I did the built-in tutor, and whenever I need to configure something, I look it up in the docs. The problem is, I only find what I already know to look for. Without reading the documentation more broadly, I don’t really know what I can configure in the first place.
So I’m curious, do you sit down and read documentation to understand a tool, or do you just search it when you hit a specific problem?
I see the value in reading documentation front-to-back for picking up all the little tidbits of information (or at least knowing where they’re documented), but yeah, ultimately I need to be building something to really process the information.
Kind of my sweetspot is documentation that makes you build along, but doesn’t overstay its welcome. As in, don’t cram all the details along the way, but rather just dish out important information on rapidfire.
I will run off building my own thing in the middle of the tutorial, if that isn’t the case, whether I want to or not. As soon as it’s quicker to learn by dicking around with the code, I will do that and then I’ve spoiled future chapters, so likely won’t return.
As a great example of the last point I LOVE this thing. https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/rust-by-example/
Rust has an official book but it also has this list of runnable programs going over the features and usage.
So when I want to quickly see/remember a topic I can just look at it but if I want to learn inner workings in more detail to mess around with I can search it in the other documentation.
Damn, even when I don’t mention it, it’s apparently obvious that I’m gushing about Rust. 😅
I had the Rust CLI Book in mind: https://rust-cli.github.io/book/index.html
Especially, if you have experience in another language already, the first chapter shows you how to develop and ship a useful Rust application in a short amount of time. And then the second chapter contains all the detail information, which you might need, after you’ve run off and started building your own thing.
But yes, Rust By Example is also really great. It happens a lot that you search “xyz in Rust” and it’s one of the first results, and always worth clicking on.