While I think there's some truth to yours and some of the sibling comments here, I think a lot of the discourse around documentation is actually just motivated reasoning.

The trope that software projects are poorly documented is so pervasive as to be saying nothing at this point. Despite extremely useful and celebrated documentation projects (MDN and Python off the top of my head) that dramatically accelerate other peoples' learning and productivity.

But when the topic is raised, the response is always "But we don't have time for documentation".

And when that time is given it becomes "It will be useless or out of date soon anyway, just go read the code" (As if there is nothing between non-practical high-level docs and per-line code comments.)

And when forced it becomes "Fine, but it won't be any good" or "Other people won't read/benefit from it anyway".

And when it's done, often as little effort as possible is put into it.

All of which smell to me like cover stories for: "I just don't want to do it."

In the case of Python, I do think the approachability of the documentation slipped after they migrated to the 3.x site, and I think this is somewhat reflected in the search engine rankings.

> Knowledge without application is nothing, imo.

Supremely narrow minded. Knowledge has many facets.

Claims without support are nothing too.

In other words: example?

Ok here's an example.

Henry Heimlich used "the heimlich maneuver" for the first time when he was 96 (in 2016), 40 years after inventing it, in the "senior home" where he was staying. But according to you, having invented was nothing in the first 40 years, because he didn't actually use it, never mind that it was used by others and taught as a life saving technique.

You're just beathtakingly ignorant of how progress actually happens. It's like your understanding of the world comes exclusively from thinking about the world in abstract hypotheticals, rather than interacting with it, which is ironic coming from someone stating that only action matters.

You’re so caught up in insulting me, you never stopped to think of I’d consider inventing a novel medical technique an “application” of knowledge. I would.

If all he did was read books about things other people did, he certainly would not have invented that.

Your following attempt at armchair psychology is humorous, but not much beyond that I’m afraid. Don’t quit your dayjob.

My dayjob is as psychologist. No joke.

And my specialty is spotting morons on social media.

Well I certainly hope your patients can find the help they need. But let’s drop the hominems and get to the point:

Do you have a real counter example? Someone that through reading the material of others alone, with no practical/“hands on” experience, was able to develop what you consider “deep” knowledge?

Edit: A day ago you were arguing talent can’t come without training. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39656444

In fact much of your comment history is dedicated to claiming knowledge requires product. How bizzare.

> A day ago you were arguing talent can’t come without training

> In fact much of your comment history is dedicated to claiming knowledge requires product.

Your comment is a great example of someone putting their (mis-)interpretation into something.

No, I didn't say anything about products. I leave that for tinkerers and sales people.

> Do you have a real counter example?

Already gave you one, no idea why you're asking again.

Reread why I said your example was bogus, I don’t have time to repeat myself.

I didn't read it the first time and I'm not going to read it a second time. I don't have time for you.

Ha, I had thought you were an LLM prompted to be a contrarian with a chip on their shoulder. This all but confirms it^. I bet you don’t even have the prior messages in your context window.

^Or at least something with approximately that level of intellectual capacity/honesty.