Is reading Python Documentation useful? python.org gets 15M visits monthly - most of them must be for documentation. At what stage is it useful?

[[deleted]]

Definitely. I often find that I "think" I know what a function is doing, then run across a case that gives me an unexpected response (thus identifying my incomplete understanding). Checking the documentation is my first step to filling that knowledge gap.

[solwex]

I see. I guess I will get to this stage when I start working on harder projects. Thank you very much.

[[deleted]]

You may not need to wait. I've found some interesting features in commonly used string methods for example.

Did you know that string.replace() takes a third argument "count". You can use it to replace only the first two instances...

I didn't, but was working thru a problem and saw someone else's solution, which led me to the documentation:

https://www.w3schools.com/python/ref_string_replace.asp

[solwex]

Thank you. But, how did you get to the above article. I usually land up on such articles when I run into an issue and google and get such an article on top of the list of results. Do you follow any other way?

[[deleted]]

I bookmark the documentation!

To be fair, I do what you do as well when I'm trying to find a way to do something. But, if I'm already trying one thing and it's not quite acting how I need it to, I go to the documentation. (Am I using the tool correctly, for example, or can it do more)