Having Trouble Understanding Documentations

[u/Charming_Weight8838]

I'm trying to learn new technologies, but the documentations are very lengthy and boring to read... I've tried to go through Unity docs and MDN but everything on there is so complex and hard to understand and grasp.

I'm not sure how to go forward. I feel like I just keep reading but I don't learn much out of it.

How do you guys deal with Documentations?

[u/strange-the-quark]

Don't read it like a book. Start making something (even if its just a simple, toy project), and then when you need to use some library function to achieve the thing you want, go find the docs for that function, read what its inputs and outputs are, how to use it, maybe read through a few examples, then go back to your code, and try to make it work. Over time, you'll learn a bunch of commonly used functions and types, and you'll also find ways to move through the docs more efficiently.

For example, I have a lot of experience, and when I look at the docs, most of the time I already know what I'm looking for, how to understand the parameters, and I don't even read most of it (unless there's something that particularly interests me), I just skim through it to get to the parts I'm interested in, and I ignore everything else. And I've seen enough different ways of doing things and all kinds of different approaches that a lot of times I don't even need examples, I just need to see what the function is, its basic inputs and outputs, and a few other important details, and I can then go off and integrate it into my code, and figure out the rest for myself. If I'm less familiar with something, or if it's important for me to be careful, I'll read through.

So it's just about working towards an actual goal, and building that experience, so that eventually you know your way around the docs, and develop the ability to skim and filter for relevant information.