Seems to be a corollary of Frank Westheimer's "A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library".

Hrm, my experience is quite the opposite. I can read a 2000 page manual which will take weeks because there's no way I can concentrate on all of it and where I probably still won't actually find the answer to my question which is an edge case OR I can just try the edge case and see what happens.

If I knew exactly where to look in the manual then the quote might fit but it rarely does.

Love it! Do you happen to know who said it?

-ss