You are 100% right. Of course it doesn’t matter. > Does an over-reliance on documentation indicate a lack of critical expertise that will ultimately result in

You are 100% right. Of course it doesn’t matter. > Does an over-reliance on documentation indicate a lack of critical expertise that will ultimately result in considerably lower job performance? Technical research is a skill. I love working with teammates who understand how to find, evaluate, and apply proven solutions. Most projects can spare the time to do a reuse trade study before writing something from scratch. Use (and authoring) of documentation is also a skill. Professionals use documentation to communicate with teammates so projects can scale efficiently.