Gregory's Server
Almost all projects/products have two mutually exclusive problems at the same time; "Too Much Information" and "Too Little Information", depending on WHO you ask and WHEN you ask.
I think the "real" problem is much more about psychology and personal character. Why would software require less "practice" to reach "proficiency" than for instance becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a musician,...?
I would argue that no matter what docs you have, it can't replace experience/practice.
@mhoye
But maybe I am missing your whole point... If this was only about C/C++ not understanding what are warnings and what are errors, then perhaps you should chose to work with a different language. Most of the weird errors in C are due to legacy code, and you could (I do) set compiler switches to treat all warnings to errors.
Number of warnings tend to build up over time and quickly becomes "invisible" due to the noise.