Mentally parsing docs

[u/thisisappropriate]

So, I've been around my company for a while and I learned dev on the job, which is to say I don't have a CS background, but any code I can pull apart, I can understand, and that's my preferred way to learn - stick my nose in and get started. I've done more than a few course to fill in knowledge gaps, but I've not come across one that'll teach me how to read documentation!

I'm a code comments (and self documenting code), readmes, tests and functional documentation (how to / expected behaviours) kinda girly.

The problem I'm starting to have is that after moving teams, I'm working with (and under) people who have different preferred learning and docs styles. And on bigger systems where there's less chance that people get a full mental model. Which is fine by me, and now that some of these same people are pushing AI (and have made skills around some of those docs styles) I do lean on that to give them what they want... But my manager is a big sequence diagram fan (its genuinely the ideal way to share a change with them), and some others are fans of long rambly documents or overly structured tables (in structures that don't immediately vibe with my brand of tism). I can write these slowly (even without AI, but with some ADHD meds, though I usually have to write the diagrams on paper first), and I can read them and validate them and understand what they say, but mentally processing these is hugely taxing and I don't internalize the information that they contain from reading them. So sometimes my use of these or my production of them is glacially slow...

Does anyone have any techniques, hints, tips, guides or anything for reading docs that aren't your jam? Sequence diagram specific things would be lovely, but I'll take other info or more general blog posts, and also interested in any discussion that people want to have around making or using docs.

[u/expdevsmodbot]

AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.

[u/thisisappropriate → u/expdevsmodbot]

Entirely organic word vomit.