In my career I have found programmers generally fall into two camps:
- those that prefer high-level overviews first, then drill down to learn details later
- those that want to thoroughly understand each smaller building block first before dealing with bigger picture concerns
For example, I jump right into projects and skim the docs and start hacking stuff together without learning the nuts and bolts, whereas my cofounder likes to read the theory behind the library, then read the source code before even starting to write a single line that uses the library. Both approaches are valid, I've just found most people tend to strongly prefer one approach or the other, and it's helpful to identify what a person's preferred approach is when working with them.
- those that prefer high-level overviews first, then drill down to learn details later
- those that want to thoroughly understand each smaller building block first before dealing with bigger picture concerns
For example, I jump right into projects and skim the docs and start hacking stuff together without learning the nuts and bolts, whereas my cofounder likes to read the theory behind the library, then read the source code before even starting to write a single line that uses the library. Both approaches are valid, I've just found most people tend to strongly prefer one approach or the other, and it's helpful to identify what a person's preferred approach is when working with them.