> ... turning everything into unconfigurable featureless appliances ... The author suggests pre-configuring whenever possible, not abandoning configurability.

> ... turning everything into unconfigurable featureless appliances ... The author suggests pre-configuring whenever possible, not abandoning configurability. > ... not writing documentation. She isn't suggesting documentation not be written. The implication is that if users are expected to read our documentation, then we could probably do a better job designing how our tool is meant to be used. It's a warning against using documentation as a crutch to hold up poorly-designed interfaces.