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benrbrayyesterday at 4:59 PM3 repliesview on HN

Presentation matters. Good documentation is evidence of a library that has been carefully thought through. Slop in the readme suggests slop in the code.


Replies

raincoleyesterday at 9:29 PM

I've seen developers who genuinely like to write code, but never met one who likes to write documents. I know they exist somewhere, but I'd not judge someone's programming ability/willingness by their English writing ability/willingness.

satvikpendemyesterday at 8:45 PM

I could vibe code the hell out of something but write a good README for it by hand, doesn't mean that something is actually good. But yes, A -> B != B -> A, as your last sentence says.

roywigginsyesterday at 5:11 PM

From my point of view, if I wanted an AI summary of a project I could generate one myself. An unlabeled AI readme is almost worse than nothing! I've generated AI readmes myself- they can be useful- but they aren't something to show off.

I'll read a badly-formatted readme written by a human with far more interest than a formulaic LLM summary of a project. But it seems like nobody even notices a readme is slop because it has nice Markdown, and my best guess as to why is that people have become habituated to this stuff.