If an open source project has great docs, it will attract people for whom the project would be useless without great docs. That doesn't guarantee it will attrac

If an open source project has great docs, it will attract people for whom the project would be useless without great docs. That doesn't guarantee it will attract more contributors, or encourage people to get involved, or ensure that the maintainer will be happier and more successful over time. It just means they attract more consumers who feel entitled to the maintainer's labour and attention. More so, "great docs" tends to mean "docs that tell me exactly how to solve my problem so I don't have to think about it". Otherwise the docs are "bad". It's all about Hickey-esque subjective "ease" and not objective simplicity and excellence. This is why "read the source code" or "read the tests" is treated as a sin here: they demand some kind of interpretative effort from the reader, some sense of adventure, and so on. The author also assumes a priori that the source code will be bad and the tests will be unreadable... but at the same time expects that you will write stellar docs and handhold everyone with the patience of a saint. If everyone demanded this, there'd be no real open source. Forks would never get picked up, ideas wouldn't get recycled unless they were actively taught, and there wouldn't be an ecosystem. What this person is basically saying is that it isn't enough to release your code, no, you must in fact write a book and then start a school, and spend all your time patiently dealing with students. If that's your ambition, great, but the idea that this is the baseline you need to do is absurd. Personally I dislike the kind of student described here very much. I didn't get along with them in college either. Btw, you can try writing all the docs you want, but nobody will ever tell you why your docs are bad and what would make them better. Just doesn't happen.