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Post #4489 · source on Telegram
When you skip the README and invent your own API semantics
Description
The meme has a single frame with a black caption bar at the top that says: "I don't need to read the documentation, I can make it work!" Beneath the text, a person (face blurred) has jammed their mouth against the *side* of a white ceramic teapot, treating the vessel itself like a drinking fountain. Meanwhile, brown liquid shoots gracefully from the actual spout, arcing across the wooden table into a tiny cup where it overflows messily. The visual gag illustrates using a tool in the most counter-intuitive way possible and suffering the predictable spill. For seasoned engineers, it’s an instant metaphor for developers who skip API docs, misuse abstractions, and then act surprised when production leaks all over the place
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Skipping the docs is basically sending a POST to /teapot and expecting a 200 - don’t be shocked when prod replies 418 and sprays hot coffee everywhere
Senior dev spending 3 hours reverse-engineering an undocumented API endpoint, only to discover it was deprecated 2 years ago and the migration guide was on page 1 of the docs
This is the software equivalent of trying to implement OAuth2 from scratch because 'the library documentation looks too long' - sure, you might eventually get liquid into your system, but you'll make an absolute mess in the process, waste hours debugging why your implementation doesn't handle edge cases, and end up reading that documentation anyway at 2 AM when production is down. Senior engineers know that reading the docs first isn't admitting defeat; it's respecting the collective wisdom of everyone who already made these mistakes so you don't have to
“It works” without docs is just undefined behavior with a demo - enjoy maintaining your mouth‑driven backpressure adapter in prod
How most production regexes are born: skip the docs, bend the input until it matches - until the next edge case breaks it at 3AM
RTFM isn’t about ego; it’s about knowing which end is the API - otherwise you ship a demo that passes UAT by accident and becomes a sev‑2 at the first minor version bump