In 2013, a reply1 to a thread caught my eyes, the context didn’t interest me, but it did bring out the idea of this post, only it took me more than two years (2013-01-20T06:16:40Z), finally got my fingers on keyboard typing what’s in my mind.

How many clicks to do certain task should already be covered in the manual, you just need to RTFM. However, who on this day reads manuals? who still writes manuals for users?

A couple of decades ago, I remember the feeling of touching a brand new manuals from games — came in diskettes — with extreme care, worrying my fingerprint would be left on the fine prints. Amazed by the amount of books that the Borland-then-Inprise-then-Borland-again-and-now-Embarcadero Delphi shipped with, you can describe they are bricks and they could come in handy if you need a significant weight — or weapon.

There days, it seems no one has time to sit down to read an manual. I’d spend hours reading an manual before even installing the software. Have you ever tried to read a programming language’s specification or a library reference? It seems to me that many new learners haven’t even spent any time to study any beginner’s tutorials, but they do however have time to post questions that can be easily answered by themselves if they can even search.

Of course, manuals are still written and printed, and undeniably, electronic version is convenient as they are searchable and quickly seekable. However, I fear many more are paying less attention to producing manuals. You can argue that the developments progress fast, and changes happen every day as the version numbers jumps and bumps. Can they really be excuses for not making good manuals?

As the open source projects really kick off — I mean more noticed by non-developers or who don’t have knowledge of reading codes — in recent years, it gets worst for manuals, many can’t even have an informative README page, needless to say, the code quality is not even worth a word to criticize, it’s as if those so-called developers or self-claimed programmers are dumping garbage, many of them probably hold a BS CS degree, essentially GIGO in a sense.

You must have heard someone read the dictionary for fun, which I find hard to believe that could be fun, but I did read library reference and language specification a few times in my time, yes, from start to the end, and it’s oddly fun.

One type of manual always stuns me, that’s those for appliances, such as microwave oven, cooker or air conditioner. They seem to spell out the obvious points and yet exhibit patiences. You do have to have the patience to write down those boring step by step about how to activate a special cooking method for certain food. Those manual writers must be Vulcan.

Female Q: The Vulcan talent for stating the obvious never ceases to amaze me.

To be fair, it’s not actually so obvious, just I’ve pressed a few buttons on a few machine with same design of input methods, so I don’t even need to read the manual. However, if I get a machine which has been designed slightly different, like holding down instead of one press, then it would take me some time to figure out or even require to seek counsel from manual.

Same can be applied to how many clicks, it’s just a matter of design and trained behavior or you need to read the manual. And if you already read, you will know everything you need to know, and there wouldn’t be that thread nor this blog post.

Keep calm and read manuals.

[1]https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1220059#p1220059 is gone. (2015-12-02T02:58:40Z)