alt Hacker NewsI recall similar arguments being made against search engines: People who had built up a library of internal knowledge about where and how to find things didn't like that it had become so easy to search for resources.
The arguments were similar, too: What will you do if Google goes down? What if Google gives the wrong answer? What if you become dependent on Google? Yet I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this uses search engines as a tool to find what they need quickly on a daily basis.
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I have been online since 1993 on Usenet. That was definitely not a widespread belief. We thought DejaNews was a godsend.
It's possible those arguments are correct. I wouldn't give up Google and SO, but I suspect I was learning faster when my first stop was K&R or a man page. There's a lot of benefit in building your own library of knowledge instead of cribbing from someone else's.
Of course no-one's stopping a junior from doing it the old way, but no-one's teaching them they can, either.
I argue that there is a strong, strong benefit to reading the docs: you often pick up additional context and details that would be missing in a summary.
Microsoft docs are a really good example of this where just looking through the ToC on the left usually exposes me to some capability or feature of the tooling that 1) I was not previously aware of and 2) I was not explicitly searching for.
The point is that the path to a singular answer can often include discovery of unrelated insight along the way. When you only get the answer to what you are asking, you lose that process of organic discovery of the broader surface area of the tooling or platform you are operating in.
I would liken AI search/summaries to visiting only the well-known, touristy spots. Sure, you can get shuttled to that restaurant or that spot that everyone visits and posts on socials, but in traveling that way, you will miss all of the other amazing food, shops, and sights along the way that you might encounter by walking instead. Reading the docs is more like exploring the random nooks and crannies and finding experiences you weren't expecting and ultimately knowing more about the place you visited than if you had only visited the major tourist destinations.
As a senior-dev, I have generally a good idea of what to ask for because I have built many systems and learned many things along the way. A junior dev? They may not know what to ask for and therefore, may never discover those "detours" that would yield additional insights to tuck into the manifolds of their brains for future reference. For the junior dev, it's like the only trip they will experience is one where they just go to the well known tourist traps instead of exploring and discovering.