Reading the man page instead of Googling this will make you a better engineer, and it will also cost more of your time while you figure out what the man page is trying to say. This knowledge may save you time later, if you use it again, or not. So the advice I would give is, never Google if the answer can be found in the man page. Unless it's a tool you're unlikely to ever use again, of course.
Man pages are so insufferably long and mostly irrelevant though. It's come up on HN before, I think, how if you're ever looking for anything specific like commonly used arguments and common usages, it's a complete waste of time to go through an entire man page.
Except that, if you think about it, every sentence in a well-written man page was put there by an absolute expert in the tool who thought you might need to know it. If you want to master your tools, it's absolutely not a waste of time to read the friendly manual. When you use a system professionally every day and refuse to read the manuals because it takes too long, and you're in way too much of a hurry, you're only hurting yourself in the long run.
You're probably going to notice the time you spend reading man pages, when you just! want! to! get! something! done! And that's frustrating. What you're less likely to notice is the next five times you reach for the wrong tool, or have to go hunting around for some bubble-gum-and-twine way to do something, because you didn't previously read the man page that tells you exactly what you needed to know to do it easily and correctly.
Well, no. Even if I read the damn thing, there are tens of tools I use day to day. I'm not going to remember any of it. It doesn't matter how much of an expert the author was if it's not structured in a useful way. And I've read enough fucking man pages. I've retained zero except for maybe what I ended up using. If I used it more than once. Maybe. Man pages don't tell you shit. They tell you everything and you still need to parse, interpret and analyze it because it's so ridiculously dense and there's never any guidance on actual real-world usage. Theoretically they're useful, realistically, they completely ignore everything about how human beings function. They're not written for people.
Hell, I often find that while the author has managed to cram everything and the kitchen sink into it, there's so much missing from it regarding how a tool works, caveats, whatever. All these things that are crucial to actually understanding the tools you're using beyond what some flag or other does on a surface level.
Reading, interpreting, and using dense technical documentation is a skill, just like reading maths. If you don't get anything out of it, maybe this is a skill you are presently lacking and something you should improve. Taking notes on what you are doing and reviewing your initial guesses, resources consulted, and eventual solutions may help you consolidate this ad-hoc knowledge into understanding.
I've read many man pages, many many times, and if I get nothing out of it, I find it is invariably because I am in a hurry, and I'm probably about to fuck something up. The thing to do is usually to slow down and do it right. Only rarely is the right thing to ask someone else for the solution, or see what some other poorly-informed person on the internet thought, although in an emergency asking for help is almost always the right call.
A huge amount of what man pages don't tell you is general Unix philosophy. Man pages don't tell you the lore around the thing, they describe the implementation. It's up to you to infer the consequences and how it can be used. Man pages don't hide the underlying bones of the system either, and generally assume you're comfortable writing a C program to test a syscall if you're not sure about something. So sure, reading man pages isn't always easy, but neither is getting regular exercise or eating your vegetables.
You're insufferable like every other Linux elitist out there. You realize being polite while being an arrogant prick doesn't change how much of an asshole you are being? I hate this kind of bullshit and I'm tired of it. And I'll get warned because I'm the one getting mad over it. Fuck this shit.
I know it sucks when your environment sucks and your tools suck and people tell you your habits suck too. I can tell you're frustrated by your tone in this thread even before I told you that you may lack the skill of slowing down enough to read technical documentation. So, you're right. I'm telling you to be better and try harder, and I don't even know your situation! Maybe that does make me an asshole. Certainly most people higher on "agreeableness" than I am wouldn't say those mean things.
By the way: I might be a Linux elitist, but nobody's ever called me that. I use OS X in my day job. I've been programming in some capacity for about 30 years. Your mileage may vary. If you take my advice you may hate me for it, but it will almost certainly make you a better developer in the long run. And I don't mind if you think I'm an asshole. I know I'm right, and you probably know I'm right too.
Finally, if we weren't having this interaction in public, I'd be kinder, gentler, and might not say anything at all. But if one other person who hates reading difficult technical material is pushed to overcome that limitation by reading this thread, it's worth it, even if it means making you mad.
And just in case you're still reading, in addition to reading man pages, and taking notes, here are the other things you should be doing:
Preferring textbooks over blog posts and youtube videos to learn a new field.
Reading original research by pioneers in the field, like Turing, Shannon, etc, rather than their main findings rehashed by lesser minds.
Reading source code rather than jumping from documentation to Stack Overflow when something doesn't work.
Reading Knuth on algorithms, Stevens on Unix networking, etc. In other words, read the classics that everyone says you should read but most people don't. Work through the exercises. It's the closest thing to an actual superpower.
Look around for people better than you at all this stuff to help you improve.
