In an ideal setting, would you actually go through the whole thing before programming?

Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by an ideal setting: in an _ideal_ setting, everything would be so intuitive that there'd be no need to read any documentation at all; you'd just have a goal, and you'd sit down and immediately start working toward that goal. You could consult an all-knowing "oracle" if you had a specific question that you needed the answer to and that all-knowing oracle would always provide a correct and specific answer. I don't know if this is actually achievable, but I do think most software tasks are estimated under the assumption that it's not only achievable but the present state of things. If the manual exists, though, then whoever wrote it thought it was important to present topics in a specific order rather than just organizing it in an "if you need this result, then do this" FAQ form.