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by kunwon1 924 days ago
It seems to be getting more and more common to leave your git repository completely undocumented. If you're releasing a software project on github, I want to read about it on github.

A basic README that outlines what it does, how it does it, and basic syntax - this is really easy. Table stakes, I might say. I can checkout your repo and I have everything I need to work

3 comments

Don’t disagree, but technically the docs are in the same repo. Not easily consumed though.

We removed bits from the readme as it kept becoming duplicated and eventually wrong. I think that’s the usual reason folks like to avoid it. DRY and all.

It's a terrible habit. Documentation is a nonfunctional requirement. It should describe what is not obvious to someone new and the value of it. Without the conveyance of utility and purpose, all of a project's potential value goes to waste with foot-gunning accuracy.
a lot of "open source" companies leave their repos bare so you are forced to go onto their website where they can better track and retarget you
I assume you're not talking about this company because there is no such script on spotlightjs.com (easily verifiable), and the docs are also actually in the repository:

Example: https://github.com/getsentry/spotlight/blob/main/packages/we...

Retarget you for what? "Hey you should come back and read the docs on our open source project you were interested in last week"
Hey I see you are interested in spotlight and 78 other things and your ip belongs to fortune 1k. May be you should buy the sentry enterprise license. Just my ads. I work on martech.