AWS docs felt like a wall of text, so I changed how I read them

The first time I opened an AWS service page, I closed it within a minute. There were dozens of sections, unfamiliar terms in every sentence, and no clue where to start. I assumed everyone else just understood it. I’ve since realised they probably didn’t either, they’d just found a way to read it.

I’m still a beginner and still learning this, but a few habits have made the docs a lot less scary.

Documentation isn’t a book. I used to start at the first line and quit halfway. Now I look for just three things first: the “What is [service]?” page, the “Getting started” section, and the “Pricing” page. That’s enough to know what a service is, how people begin using it, and what it could cost.

Every page has terms I haven’t met yet: region, endpoint, ARN, throughput. Before, I’d get stuck and give up. Now I write the word down, finish the page, and look up the words afterwards. It turns “I don’t understand any of this” into “I don’t understand these five words,” which is much less intimidating.

AWS docs have a few different kinds of pages, and mixing them up caused me a lot of frustration. Overview and concept pages explain the idea. Tutorials walk you through steps. API and reference pages list every option in detail, and they’re meant for looking things up, not for learning. As a beginner, I stay away from the reference pages until I know what I’m looking for.

I don’t always know which page is the right one to start with, and I still get lost. Searching “(Any service name you wanna search) getting started” usually helps more than browsing the menu. I’m sure there are better tricks, which is partly why I’m writing this.

If you’ve been at this longer than me: how do you read AWS docs? Is there a page or habit that made them finally click for you?