- it's free, unlike books
- always up-to-date, unlike even the best book after a few months
- easy to choose: heck, there's only one official documentation! No chance of making a mistake here!
Almost every Python author I've spoken with recognizes that no one resource works best for everyone. We each write to offer our particular take on a subject, and hope to find an audience that our perspective resonates with. I've never steered people away from documentation; in fact one of my goals is to steer people to the sections of documentation that they're ready to make sense of. One of my end goals is that people no longer need me as a teacher. That was my goal as a classroom teacher, and it's one of my goals as an author.
The idea that there are no mistakes in official documentation is pretty unrealistic. Technical documentation has certainly improved over the last decade or so, but it will never be perfect. Most of us recognize that some areas of programming are better handled by third party libraries. In a similar way, there will always be room for learning resources that are maintained outside of official documentation sources.
Since there's only one documentation, beginners can't get wrong with which docs to use.
Ad opposed to books, which have tons of bad choices available (hence the current discussion).
I still have some of them. They've aged surprisingly well.
What kind of books? The person you're replying to is arguing in favor of books, but saying that the documentation in particular is not a good one to start with.
The problem is "That's more or less exactly how I learned to program." sounds like it's a response to the question in the comment you replied to. Which would mean there's either disagreement or you didn't understand the question. And the way you mentioned other people sounded like you might be interpreting "guide" as a human guide.
I guess instead you were skipping the question and talking about the second sentence?
In that case I recommend quoting which sentence you're replying to in a situation like this.