Programming

Actually, several hours of cursing and trying are an excellent substitute for up to three minutes of manpage reading.

Hahaha. Most here making excuses why they don't read manuals.

I had a problem with sendmail about 20 years ago, for several days I tried ro fix it, the only way I fixed it was reading the manual, not the whole manual because about half I read what was i doing wrong.

If everything else fails, read the manual

Read the manual and touch every button! The most important lesson my father ever taught me was that you can’t break software permanently. We can always fix it, worst case we just install it again. Computers are toys and I played without fear

You can even learn a new language if you first read the version in a language you know and then do a language you don't know yet.

Yeah very true. I was floundering with an issue recently. I couldn't find any help until I added "docs" to my search. RTFM.

This goes against what we know about good design. Where possible you shouldn't need to use a manual. Telling people to always read the manual is a cop out.

Also he apparently read his furnace's manual and months/years later remembered what a flashing light meant, despite never having had to refer to it again? Either this guy has freakishly good memory (possible but unlikely) or he's bullshitting. Given the overall tone I'd go with the latter.

And what is even the advantage of knowing in advance? Does he think people would not read the manual after seeing a flashing error light? You can look up most issues when they happen you don't have to memorise error codes in advance.

This is just a dumb "I'm so great" post.

Déjà vu.