If you need to learn something (e.g. you're taking a class or your supervisor wants you to learn something), then reading the documentation is a good idea.

If you already know the content, but accidentally made a typo and are trying to debug it, then reading the documentation isn't going to help. An error message pointing out the problem will help.

I had a teacher like that in High School. "I made a mistake in this proof, but I'm not sure what it is." "You have the book for the course, the answer is in there."

Reading techical documentation is a skill. It's one that is sorely lacking in IT from develpers to ops. RTFM when learning is a valid lesson in and of itself.

Would you expect a sports referee to manage a match without knowing the rules of the game?.

No but the sports referee perhaps specializes in one or a few games/leagues.

And at high levels, a referee role is probably similar to physician/lawyer where you'll have annual rule updates/changes, jurisprudence history of past rulings, and conventions/associations of referees where they will be spending money, time and effort when not on the field.

Now multiply the referee's game or league types by everything in /usr/bin

lol how the sarcasm was lost on hackernews