Comment by hatthew
4 days ago
I think it's a bit harsh to call everyone who disagrees amateur. However, anecdotally it doesn't feel very incorrect. When I do pair programming with less-experienced developers, I'll often watch them glance at the API docs, skim over the technical details, look at the example, copy paste it, and then be confused why it doesn't work. Then I pointedly suggest reading the specific paragraph that explains the confusion they have.
Yeah, I'm not saying it to be mean I'm just calling it as I see it. Can't recall if it was the article or a comment or both, but someone mentioned that it's hard to understand API docs in some cases because it relies on understanding the language itself.
If you don't even know the language well enough to read docs I'd say you're an amateur. And if you're one of those people who just chronically don't read docs you're definitely an amateur. I mean you may have a job and you may even build stuff that kind of works, but unless you're sitting down and looking closely at the details you're not doing things right. You can't be. Doing things right requires looking closely at the details.
And I know from experience that there's a vast number of employed amateurs who write nothing but legacy code.