Don't worry about memorizing the manual. When I first got into programming, focusing on Ruby, I would study the Ruby docs intensely. I got really good at unde

Don't worry about memorizing the manual. When I first got into programming, focusing on Ruby, I would study the Ruby docs intensely. I got really good at understanding the standard library. I read the heck out of the manual, and in interviews that focused on how well I knew Ruby, I sounded really experienced. But I struggled to build basic things. There's a bunch of different types of documentation, and being able to skim them enough to get a basic understanding is super helpful! A non-comprehensive list of different types of documentation includes: - man pages - REST API docs - Language docs - RFCs - Tool specific docs Let's get specific. - Say you need to find a way to filter text in a Bash shell, and you want to read the man page for grep. Maybe you want to read https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Man-Page/q3.html https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Man-Page/q3.html to start understanding this... 'grep [-abcdDEFGHhIiJLlmnOopqRSsUVvwxZ] [-A num] [-B num] [-C[num]] [-e pattern] [-f file] [--binary-files=value] [--color[=when]] [--colour[=when]] [--context[=num]] [--label] [--line-buffered] [--null] [pattern] [file ...]' - Let's say you need to want to better understand how JSON works because you are working on a networking library. Maybe scanning https://www.json.org/ https://www.json.org/ will help you read this https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8259. - Let's say you're reading API docs for Artifactory, and they your not sure how REST works, but they keep talking about it. Maybe scanning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfe... will help you read https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Artifactory+REST+API https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Artifactory+RES... I identify with your pain. Reading docs is hard, especially when you're diving into unfamiliar problems with unfamiliar tools. All I can say is that you just keep pushing yourself to get better at it, and if you're lucky, maybe you'll be fortunate enough to work with people who can help make the learning curve less steep. There's no shortcut to getting to where you want to go. A few tips & tricks that make things less painful for me: - getting high level context by watching short YouTube videos makes it easier to read denser material that is hard to absorb - working on things that interest me makes reading dry documentation a lot easier - building something at the same time I'm reading docs makes it a lot easier to spot errors in the docs & gaps in my understanding Keep pushing. It's always going to be hard. You just get better at working on hard things :)