That can backfire if there's a big gap between the tutorial and the reference documentation. I had a huge and extremely unpleasant initial frustration with Boost Python. The tutorial had me download the Boost source code, build it, and work in the Boost source tree. It was slick and easy. A very exciting start! After I did the tutorial I blew away the Boost source tree, installed the libboost-python package, and got utterly stuck. The reference documentation provided no guidance. There was no libboost-python-dev version of the package at that time, so I thought installing libboost-python would give me everything I needed to develop. Oh well, I eventually figured it out and rebuilt the Boost source.
But to build code that wasn't inside the Boost build tree, I had to read the documentation for the Jam build language so I could modify the build files! I had to learn the damn build language so I could fix the build files so I could get Hello Freakin' World working in a top-level directory. After that I never had to touch the build files in any meaningful way again. A page of documentation could have saved me a whole lot of work.
Partly I blame the tutorial for raising my expectations of the documentation. I've come to accept that software often requires fiddling, but the Boost Python tutorial was so slick and easy that I figured the answer HAD to be in the documentation, right in front of me. The whole time I was working on figuring out the build files, about 10% of my brain was working on the problem and 90% of my brain was screaming, "You idiot! This is a well-documented project! You don't have to think this hard to get Hello World working! Stop fiddling and go back to the documentation and find what you missed!" And I did waste a whole hell of a lot of time re-reading the documentation looking for what I missed.
But to build code that wasn't inside the Boost build tree, I had to read the documentation for the Jam build language so I could modify the build files! I had to learn the damn build language so I could fix the build files so I could get Hello Freakin' World working in a top-level directory. After that I never had to touch the build files in any meaningful way again. A page of documentation could have saved me a whole lot of work.
Partly I blame the tutorial for raising my expectations of the documentation. I've come to accept that software often requires fiddling, but the Boost Python tutorial was so slick and easy that I figured the answer HAD to be in the documentation, right in front of me. The whole time I was working on figuring out the build files, about 10% of my brain was working on the problem and 90% of my brain was screaming, "You idiot! This is a well-documented project! You don't have to think this hard to get Hello World working! Stop fiddling and go back to the documentation and find what you missed!" And I did waste a whole hell of a lot of time re-reading the documentation looking for what I missed.