I'm hardly advocating reading every single man page; just the man pages for things you actually use. And 10x War and Peace's is hardly an extreme amount of reading to become a knowledgeable systems administrator. That would probably be akin to two semesters of 5 courses each to become a systems administrator; I think most community college or vocational school programs for systems administration require 2 years, and wouldn't teach you nearly as much.
In any event, I'm not taking the position that casual *nix users should be reading every single man page. Just for the essentials like ssh, cp/mv, ls, man itself, etc. You do not need to be an expert to read a few man pages on utilities you often use. Everyone should RTFM, at least for the relevant bits, no matter what level you're at. Anyone who found the initial post useful would also find reading the man page for ssh useful. Thus, they should have read it. That's not at all suggesting that they need to become an expert.
The ~. key sequence is used in pretty much any console type application, not just ssh, so it's quite useful to know. If you do any work with a serial console i.e. configuring network devices, pdus, even some servers, etc., then it's pretty useful for ending a session as there's no TCP connection to close and take you back to the local console on your terminal emulator. If you're working on the actual local console and not in a full blown GUI on a system without virtual consoles, there may be no other way to close the serial console session on some platforms (notably man different OS'es running on Sparc64's as well as not on Solaris at all until recently).
Regardless, it's generally less effort to type ~. than to close and reopen a window/tab in your terminal emulator of choice. The time spent to read the man page would inevitably be made up by a few clicks saved here and there throughout a long career. It would have taken less time than to make multiple posts in this thread.
In any event, I'm not taking the position that casual *nix users should be reading every single man page. Just for the essentials like ssh, cp/mv, ls, man itself, etc. You do not need to be an expert to read a few man pages on utilities you often use. Everyone should RTFM, at least for the relevant bits, no matter what level you're at. Anyone who found the initial post useful would also find reading the man page for ssh useful. Thus, they should have read it. That's not at all suggesting that they need to become an expert.
The ~. key sequence is used in pretty much any console type application, not just ssh, so it's quite useful to know. If you do any work with a serial console i.e. configuring network devices, pdus, even some servers, etc., then it's pretty useful for ending a session as there's no TCP connection to close and take you back to the local console on your terminal emulator. If you're working on the actual local console and not in a full blown GUI on a system without virtual consoles, there may be no other way to close the serial console session on some platforms (notably man different OS'es running on Sparc64's as well as not on Solaris at all until recently).
Regardless, it's generally less effort to type ~. than to close and reopen a window/tab in your terminal emulator of choice. The time spent to read the man page would inevitably be made up by a few clicks saved here and there throughout a long career. It would have taken less time than to make multiple posts in this thread.