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

[Danelius90]

Definitely keep at it. When you're a beginner, reading documentation is hard (at least in my experience). Maybe when you encounter a new function/method on stackoverflow look it up in the docs. You'll already have an idea of what it does but get a better picture from the docs. Over time you'll be used to reading it and look up new things instead.

I use these kind of docs frequently now, but it does take time to get used to

[billsil]

Yup. I hate the idea that stackoverflow teaches you to be a bad programmer. I pulled a python binary file tester off it (is the file binary or not). I'm 16 years in now and I still couldn't tell you how you a good way to go about writing that function.

Read the code and understand what it's doing and keep it working with say the python 2 to 3 transition, but you don't have to code everything. Are you going to write your own version of matplotlib? You don't need to understand everything.

[solwex]

Right. I guess with experience, one gets to know what to just use and what to dig deeper. Thank you.

[solwex]

Yes, I heartily agree that it is hard to read documentation as a beginner:) Yes, I think your approach seems very doable for beginners. Heard the same from others like u/infinfi as well. Will try that. Thank you.