How do you tell if a user has read the software documentation? If users are anything like us programmers, it's a pretty safe assumption that they have not read the documentation. Time is short, and reading manuals is tedious and time-consuming.

I once knew someone who worked on the support desk for a large internal software application. He cut his workload by 85% using one simple technique. Whenever someone reported a problem with the software, he asked them which page of the manual it violated before he would investigate it. Most users preferred to live with any bug rather than spend hours tunneling through the manual, and Perkins' technique saved him a lot of bother right up until the time he got fired.

Another way of encouraging people to read the manual is to have the program ask “Did you read the manual, answer y/n:” The program won't proceed until it gets the right answer. And neither “yes” nor “no” is the right answer. Somewhere in the manual, buried deep in an obscure paragraph, is the information that, to continue, this question expects the answer “Teletubbies.” But you'll only know that if you read the manual thoroughly.

Are you a student reading this chapter for an “Advanced Java” class? OK, then! Please demonstrate that you have read this chapter by writing your favorite color at the top right of the front sheet of your homework for this chapter. If blue is your favorite color, write “blue.” Write “black” if you like black best, etc. Professors: see how many of your students really do the assigned reading. But be careful—last time I did this, one of the students wrote a little note buried in his next homework setting me a similar challenge, to test if I really read each page of all the homework that was submitted!