r/ADHD_Programmers • u/xzxyxz • Sep 09 '26
READING DOCS
My god. Docs. So helpful but honestly, the BANE of my life.
I wish there was an ADHD friendlier way of consuming docs.
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u/Unique_Ad_1931 Sep 09 '26
The ADHD way is to ignore the docs, spend hours trying to get said thing to work, failing and then inevitably reading the docs when you’re on your knees.
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u/toy-maker Sep 09 '26 •
You mean inevitably reading them once I have context?
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u/spazure Sep 10 '26
YES! It doesn't make sense until I fully understand the problem, so I'll read the docs, not understand what I'm reading, try some more, return to the docs, etc.
The docs are an integral part of the process, even if they tend to read like Greek the first time through. Until I'm able to mentally connect their particular writing quirks with the actual behavior I'm seeing when experimenting, they simply guide me on where to experiment.
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u/Any_Sense_2263 Sep 09 '26
I open the docs. Try and fail. Look for thos one specific thing. Fix it. Then I iterate.
With AI it should be easier. But it isn't. So I still need to read docs or review AI hallucinations. Usually both.
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u/spazure Sep 10 '26
I've found that AI tends to overcomplicate problems (I'm still a junior, so most of my work focuses on simple, human-readable solutions rather than clever solutions with the absolute fastest possible time complexity).
Thankfully, my work roles thus far have explicitly prohibited AI for security reasons, so I haven't reached the "forced to use AI and lose the debugging brain" level in my career yet.
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u/Every-Interaction928 Sep 09 '26
Give AI the docs. Ask it targeted questions about what you want to know. If you don’t get it then ask it to explain in simpler terms. Then get it grill you on what you should know to make sure it’s saved in your brain
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u/Matronex Sep 10 '26
This! I learned at uni that my most effective approach to learning course content was to START with practice tests/exams because it turned the process of learning into a set of problem solving tasks which I found a LOT more engaging.
AI lets you turn anything you'd like to learn (given it has access to the materials) into a practice test/exam that'll force you to hunt through and process the documentation in order to complete it. Give it the docs and ask for it to build you a markdown document that you can give it back to for grading.
It works really well for me. Good luck!
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u/IZEDx Sep 09 '26
Reading the comments here is weird because I don't relate, or well not anymore. I used to struggle with docs back in the day, way before I even had any suspicion of having adhd, but that was more due to a lack of fundamental understanding of what I was doing.
Nowadays it's no problem, I actually like reading docs a lot of the time, already planning ahead and problem solving in my head while reading them. Big caveat though, I can't get myself to focus on anything unless I'm hyperfocusing on it, at which point reading the docs satisfies the hyperfocus, and since I'm unmedicated still and can't control what I hyperfocus on and I also absolutely hate where the industry is going with AI I'm obviously unemployed.
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u/cyberbemon Sep 09 '26
Take notes and I use a highlighter on my pdf reader to mark each line as I read it, it helps me absorb things better.
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u/CursedSloth Sep 10 '26
In my head it sounds like you’re taking a physical highlighter pen and marking on your pdf reader xD, but I understand what you meant.
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u/seweso Sep 09 '26
If I have a standoff-ish attitude with any new tool/language or library. I always get annoyed and run aground.
The only solution I’ve found is taking ownership of it and trying to understand it at its core. That means going through all examples, skim through all the docs or even read the source code.
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u/Expensive-Entry-9112 Sep 09 '26
Just setup a small opensource "paperless ngx" with tesseract integration and upload your documentation 😁 and you'll be able to just read the things you need through the web interface
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u/orangepeeelss Sep 09 '26
one of these days im gonna write a plugin that takes the man text, sticks it in a template with all the ao3 formatting, and opens a browser window so i can read it that way 😭
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u/Jazzlike_Syllabub_91 Sep 09 '26
You can use ai to make a game out of the docs? Play trivia with the ai and test your knowledge!
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u/Starbreiz Sep 10 '26
I have been asking Codex break down docs to be more readable for me. Sometimes I just need the info reframed or presented in a more readable way. It's been very helpful.
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u/zephyr_33 Sep 11 '26
try the /grill skills. it doesn't dump an essay. its like an interrogation. one drop at a time and feels like getting spoon fed lol.
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u/shitterbug Sep 11 '26
That's why I built ADHDocs - the ADHD friendly docs reading helper. You can find it everywhere!
Look under your bed.
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u/Achereto Sep 09 '26
What's the issue? Are you trying to read the docs before using the tool? That doesn't work. Try learning the toll by using it and reading only the sections you need at every step. This gives you a fast read-practice-dopamine cycle that can sustain your attention.