[treyfitty]

Eh, I have the opposite experience. When I was a beginner in a any language, RTFM didn't work for me because:

A) Reading a manual requires some requisite knowledge due to esoteric references.

B) RTFM is a skill in and of itself.

C) Manuals rarely mention corner cases or "gotchas" which can cause confusion to a beginner.

D) Manuals never comment on best practices, which tutorials do.

[elevaet]

The F'ing M is often an afterthought, and sometimes you need to dig into the source code to understand how the thing works, or at least to find the right handles to grasp.

Not necessarily the right approach for beginners, but I've wasted a lot of time trying to find the thing in the documentation, when I should have just lifted the hood in the first place.