And out of date documentation can be a footgun. I would rather a Dev spend time reading well written, self-documenting code than "documentation" that has becom

And out of date documentation can be a footgun. I would rather a Dev spend time reading well written, self-documenting code than "documentation" that has become months or years out of date. As systems become large and complex - and evolve - the work to keep documentation up to date becomes enormous. I have seen many project that generate reams of documentation at the start, and for almost all of it to never be updated again even after major shifts in design and technology. And arguing that documentation can compensate for poorly written code as far as maintainability goes is simply absurd. Yet if it really is a "secret sauce" it would do so. I would MUCH rather a comprehensive unit/regression test suite than copious documentation, and I think reading tests is one of the best ways, if not the best way, to start understanding a code base.