This assumes you aren't online, where nearly any shell script example you can think of is likely only a google search away. I don't think that anyone really spends days studying man pages anymore. Though it's nice that they are there when you need to look up something system-specific.
That's like saying language y is fine because I can just search and copy and paste... no you cannot. If you do anything beyond a simple [[ -f somefile ]] && do something sh turns into a nightmare.. case in point autotools.
