I tutored CS in college and I’ve seen this effect as well.<p>On assignments where literally every step was documented, my students would still often not know what to do, because they had missed something small but crucial.<p>After reading “The Design of Everyday Things”, I’ve come to design things based on the assumption that people don’t read. Even when their sole task is to read, they just <i>don’t</i>.<p>I write compilers, and producing good error messages is a crucial part. But as it turns out, the <i>best</i> predictor of a programmer’s ability to notice and correct an error is <i>not</i> good error-message text—it’s accurate and precise source locations.