"Life it too short to read the manual"

[Egan Ford]

(09-17-2018 07:51 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  back when there were well-written manuals

That is the problem, IMHO. The lack of well-written manuals.

I just purchased a new 10G switch for my lab. It came with a folded sheet of paper with instructions on how to connect the rack ears and plug it in. Some info on the LEDs, how to correctly connect an SFP+ transceiver and fibre cable. The baud rate for the serial cable.

Online the admin and CLI guides are dated 2014 and 2015 and do not cover this exact model.
The manuals assume a context the user may not have, not working with these products. The vendor I used for routers is even worse.

In both cases, it is a trip to the forums to ask the community for direction, hints, suggestions, and to determine if a feature is missing or just not documented.

(09-17-2018 12:45 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  But watching a professional at work and being able to copy his workflow is - for me at least - a great advantage over having to work it all out for myself, and possibly missing some important things just because they are not obvious. This is by the way for the video editing software "DaVinci Resolve 15", an incredibly powerful piece of code and totally free in the basic version. No way can I learn to use this code by reading a manual alone!

I just went through that same exact exercise myself. The YouTubers usually set some context I can relate to, then learning is not just about the product, but how people are effective using it.

I used to read the manuals end-to-end, when they were worth reading. The manuals assumed no prior knowledge about the product or its use. The manuals covered the common use cases as well. Today I think most manuals are for reference, perhaps things are more complex and it is not possible to write a well written manual. Software changes to quickly, etc...

Today in our goal oriented world people expect dumbed down experience (if consumer device), manuals will not be written or read. For myself, I'd read a manual if I could get a manual worth reading. Forums like this, IMHO, are better than YouTube, unless it is something completely new to me, then a gentle introduction to "video editing" (something I know little about) is quite effective for me to be productive quickly. I do not see how this is different than going to school and learning from a teacher. Most, I wager, cannot learn from reading a math book alone--sometimes you need a personal guide.