> They rely on ChatGPT to answer their questions instead of taking time to read the documentation or a simple web search.
Documentation is not written with answers in mind. Every little project wants me to be an expert in their solution. They want to share with me the theory behind their decisions. I need an answer now.
Web search no longer provides useful information within the first few results. Instead, I get content farms who are worse than recipe pages - explaining why someone would want this information, but never providing it.
A junior isn’t going to learn from information that starts from the beginning (“if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”) 99.999% of them need a solution they can tweak as needed so they can begin to understand the thing.
LLMs are good at processing and restructuring information so I can ask for things the way I prefer to receive them.
Ultimately, the problem is actually all about verification.
> Documentation is not written with answers in mind. Every little project wants me to be an expert in their solution. They want to share with me the theory behind their decisions. I need an answer now.
I have an answer now, because I read the documentation last week.
As a real example, I needed to change my editor config last month. I do this about once every 5 years. I really didn’t want to become an expert in the config system again, so I tried LLM.
Sad to report, it told me where to look but all of the exact details were wrong. Maybe someday soon, though.
I used to make fun of (or deride) all the "RTFM" people when I was a junior too. Why can't you just tell me how to do whatever thing I'm trying to figure out? Or point me in the right direction instead of just saying "its in the docs lol"?
Sometime in the last few years I've started doing more individual stuff, I've started reading documentation before running npm i. And honestly? All the "RTFM" people were 100% right.
Nobody here is writing code that's going to be used on a patient on the surgical table right now. You have time to read the docs and you'll be better if you do.
I'm also a hypocrite because I will often point an LLM at the root of a set of API docs and ask how to do a thing. But that's the next best thing to actually reading it yourself, I think.
I'm in total agreement, TM does wonders. Even if you don't remember all of it you get a gist of what's gong on and can find things (or read them) faster.
In Claude I put in a default prompt[1] that helps me gain context when I do resort to asking the LLM for a specific question.
[1] Your role is to provide technical advice in developing a Java application. Keep answers concise and note where there are options and where you are unsure on what direction that should be taken. Please cite any sources of information to help me deep dive on any topics that need my own analysis.
Documentation is not written with answers in mind. Every little project wants me to be an expert in their solution. They want to share with me the theory behind their decisions. I need an answer now.
Web search no longer provides useful information within the first few results. Instead, I get content farms who are worse than recipe pages - explaining why someone would want this information, but never providing it.
A junior isn’t going to learn from information that starts from the beginning (“if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”) 99.999% of them need a solution they can tweak as needed so they can begin to understand the thing.
LLMs are good at processing and restructuring information so I can ask for things the way I prefer to receive them.
Ultimately, the problem is actually all about verification.