Maybe it's because I started as a chemist, where you look at patents all the time, but yes I've absolutely looked at patents for inspiration, to figure out how things work, to attack certain problems, etc.

The usefulness of the patent disclosure is that it allows someone to write a different document, paper, or blog post that explains how it works in terms a normal software engineer can understand. Without that patent, none of the other public documentation of how to do something would exist.

You don't read the patent to learn how something works, you learn by reading other explanations that can be made available because the patent exists.

Easier/faster replication/implementation/new invention etc is the value. There are other people besides software developers that can look at a patent for inspiration and hire software developers to implement it