[Verdex]

I do read the code instead of the documentation, whenever that is an option.

Interesting factiod. The number of times I've found the code to describe what the software does more accurately than the documentation: many.

The number of times I've found the documentation to describe what the software does more accurately than the code: never.

[crazygringo]

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of documentation.

It's not to be more accurate than the code itself. That would be absurd, and is by definition impossible, of course.

It's to save you time and clarify why's. Hopefully, reading the documentation is about 100x faster than reading the code. And explains what things are for, as opposed to just what they are.

[Verdex]

Clearly.

Crazy thing.

Number of times reading the source saved time and clarified why: many.

Number of times reading the documentation saved time and clarified why: never.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky?

EDIT:

The hilarious part to me is that everyone can talk past each other all day (reading the documentation) or we can show each other examples of good/bad documentation or good/bad code (reading the code) and understand immediately.

[crazygringo]

> Number of times reading the documentation saved time and clarified why: never.

OK, so let's use an example... if you need to e.g. make a quick plot with Matplotlib. You just... what? Block off a couple weeks and read the source code start to finish? Or maybe reduce it to just a couple days, if you're trying to locate and understand the code just for the one type of plot you're trying to create? And the several function calls you need to set it up and display it in the end?

Instead of looking at the docs and figuring out how to do it in 5 or 10 min?

Because I am genuinely baffled here.

[palata]

Literate programming is not about documenting the public API, it's about documenting the implementation details, right? Otherwise no need for a new name, it's just "API documentation".

> if you need to e.g. make a quick plot with Matplotlib. You just... what?

Read the API documentation.

Now if you need to fix a bug in Matplotlib, or contribute a feature to it, then you read the code.