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One of the many ways that search got worse over time was the promotion of blog spam over actual documentation. Generally, I would rather have good API documentation or a user guide that leads me through the problem so that next time I know how to help myself. Reading through good API documentation often also educates you about the overall design and associated functionality that you may need to use later. Reading the manual for technology that you will be regularly using is generally quite profitable.

Sometimes, a function doesn't work as advertised or you need to do something tricky, you get a weird error message, etc. For those things, stackoverflow could be great if you could find someone who had a similar problem. But the tutorial level examples on most blogs might solve the immediate problem without actually improving your education.

It would be similar to someone solving your homework problems for you. Sure you finished your homework, but that wasn't really learning. From this perspective, ChatGPT isn't helping you learn.


blueflow
You parent searches for answers, you search for documentation. Thats why AI works for him and not for you.
ryanackley
You're completely missing his point. If nobody figures things out for themselves, there's a risk that at some point, AI won't have anything to learn on since people will stop writing blog posts on how they figured something out and answering stack overflow questions.

Sure, there is a chance that one day AI will be smart enough to read an entire codebase and chug out exhaustively comprehensive and accurate documentation. I'm not convinced that is guaranteed to happen before our collective knowledge falls off a cliff.

blueflow
Read it again, slowly. FSVO "works":

  Thats why AI works for him and not for you.
We both agree.
BlackFly OP
Did I say AI didn't work for me? Nope, so it is unclear to me why you are projecting some kind of perceived deficit onto me.

The difference between me and the person I responded to is that I feel I understand the perspective of the OP and I was trying to help the person who it didn't make sense to to understand the perspective.

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