This whole thread totally loses me: I don't
get it. Here's why: To me, the coding
is and for decades has always been fast, fun,
and easy. Similarly for the design or
architecture for projects up to, say,
50,000 lines of code and several servers
sharing in the work and sharding, etc.

Piece of cake. Simple. No issues.

But there are issues, huge, humongous issues:
The main issue is just and simply making
use of the documentation, and object oriented
classes, and other software
developed by others. E.g., I've gotten --
found, downloaded, categorized, indexed,
and abstracted --
well over 5000 Web pages of relevant documentation.
At 10 a day, that's a lot of days.

E.g., learning SQL was easy, piece of cake,
obviously built a lot on set theory in
pure math (which I know pretty well and
have used a lot), and I learned SQL reading
Ullman's book over dinner at the Mount Kisco
Diner during about two weeks. No problem.
How the log file works? Fine. Entity, attribute,
relationship design -- sure, easy.

Then the
real problems: I tried to install SQL Server.
What a mess. Maybe it got installed. Someone
sent me a database, and I wanted SQL Server to
recognize it. Nope, we're talking high end,
world-shaking research here, unsolved problems
of the universe, much like dark energy. As I
recall, my little effort ruined the SQL Server
installation.

So,
I make some progress doing some simple things
and then go for an update (general rule:
never update unless totally necessary).
The install asked a lot of questions with
no explanations or references to what the
heck might be the appropriate answers.
Somehow I got two installs, using Microsoft's
side by side (I've written lots of programs
and they all run side by side as far as
I can tell -- what's the issue here?),
and the install ruined my system.
SQL Server uninstall wouldn't.
System repair wouldn't. So, the
SQL Server install broke my installation
of Windows.
I reinstalled Windows and all my
software to a freshly formatted hard
disk partition. Then I tried again.
Eventually I got the SQL Server install
to work -- eventually. The mud
wrestling went on this way.

Ullman's book, SQL, etc. were easy.
Getting a good install was
a barbed wire enema with an
unanesthetized upper molar
root canal procedure while being
poked with a dozen red hot branding
irons.

Then came time for the code of my
Web pages to connect with SQL Server.
So, I need a connection string.
Yup, we're looking at a challenge
at least 1/3rd of a Nobel prize
in physics. It took a week, a solid
week just to get a connection string
that worked. Why it works, I still
don't know.

Due to the times installs ruined
my boot partition, I wanted to backup
the partition so that I could
quickly return to a good system
after some install had ruined it.

So, I used NTBACKUP. It asked if
I wanted to save "system state"
but had no explanation of what was
meant by that. They are talking about
my options for Outlook? For
the fonts on my text windows?
Well, after reinstalling all my software
several more times, I finally got
good notes and experience with
both saving a boot partition and
being able to do a restore that
would boot and be good. Hint:
Yes, very much do save "system
state" or the saved copy,
restored, won't boot. Yes,
that NTBACKUP does a volume
shadow copy, that is, saves
a boot partition while that partition
runs, is super nice, but writing
documentation on "system state"
was too difficult for Microsoft.

Net, the coding is fast, fun, and easy.
The difficulty is the documentation
and workings of other code that
needs to be used. And now we have
to use a lot of such documentation
and code.

Anyone have a way around the
problem of such documentation and
code?

"Learn to code fast"? That's less
than 5% of the work. The other 95%
is mud wrestling with bad documentation.