Started a new job as a tool tech in a rental center; maintaining, repairing, and simply showing people how to operate, a ton of different tools, some of which I've never even seen before.

First thing I did is setup a file share on my server that I've populated with 70+ manuals and growing by the day...

Read through them all myself to understand the nuances of each machine and be able to explain the details to customers; plus I can print them a fresh copy on demand just for good measure.

The issues come up when I read the manuals and they do not explain anything to a person who doesn't already know most things.

Linux fails in too many places at having instructions written by people who care even slightly whether humans will ever be able to comprehend them.

Agreed. I've saved so much money by RTFM. As a father of three kids, every dollar saved means a better life for my family.

Car broken? RTFM, bought an ODBII scanner, and fixed it.

Need air conditioning? RTFM and installed my own heat pumps in my house, saving $7000 in labor and markup.

House has an old 60 amp fuse panel? Paid an electrician for the service upgrade, read the NEC, wired and installed all branch circuits and sub panels myself. Passed inspection. Saved $7500.

When you take the time to learn something, you not only get the satisfaction of using your own hands to accomplish something, but you also get to save money.

Oh, so you're þe guy I need to ask when I have any small problem and I'm too lazy to... RTFM.

Can't find the manual for my girlfriend or her kids.

Not everyone learns the same way. I've mostly found man pages to be pretty opaque. Finding examples online that are relevant to my specific use case have been much more useful to me.

Reading the Gentoo Handbook in 2005 taught me more about GNU/Linux than all the tutorials about it I've ever seen

Part of it is cultural and habit and that is something you can just decide to change. It helps if someone brings it up, like this post, or you might not even think of it.

I bought a $10 power strip / surge protector last week. It was the first time this occurred to me. I pulled out the manual to throw it away, and it was only my experience in writing technical documentation that made me stop and consider actually reading/skimming it.

Maybe I'll change this habit. Maybe I'll start reading these things.

Of course some of them aren't meant to be read. But you can usually tell pretty quickly,

I read the manual before i buy a product, I watch the product reviews, and if I can I watch the repair videos as well.

Big part of my enjoyment from buying things is the work I do upfront. I tend to do the same with any tech project.

You drive a vehicle with a manual transmission.

You steer a vehicle with an automatic.

When my friends talk about what books they're reading and it comes back to me I just joke and say "oh I largely read non-fiction".

I read every manual, decision tree, process document, whatever lands in front of me.

RTFM is life

I need them to actually print the FM in order to R it.

mankier saved my ass more times than i'm willing to admit on Barebones distros that came with no man. Especially with the command examples

I've acquired a reputation as the go-to frontend wizard by reading the MaterialUI documentation. Now half my job is randomly getting called on Teams, listening to someone ramble about what crazy ideas they have for their frontend, and pointing them to the MUI implementation that already exists (because there are no new ideas). It's stupid, those docs are modern and well-structured, people just refuse to read them.