Rust and Haskell suggest books and papers instead of simple library docs

Rust and Haskell don’t skip docs; they just embed the API in a 400-page book or a peer-reviewed PDF so that by the time you find the function signature, you’ve earned the lifetime

The eternal documentation dilemma: Rust devs will write you a 500-page book explaining ownership semantics before adding a single README example, while Haskell devs publish category theory papers that require a PhD to understand why your monad transformer stack won't compile. Meanwhile, your users just want to know what parameters your function takes

Ah yes, the classic open-source maintainer's guide to documentation: Step 1 - Write a brilliant library. Step 2 - Publish a 400-page O'Reilly book and three peer-reviewed papers. Step 3 - Wonder why adoption is slow when your README just says 'see the book.' Meanwhile, developers are desperately grepping through your test suite trying to figure out how to instantiate your main class. It's the academic equivalent of 'the code is self-documenting' - technically impressive, commercially impractical, and guaranteed to spawn a dozen 'Awesome X' lists trying to reverse-engineer your API from conference talks

Docs? Nah, drop a 400-page tome or arXiv paper - users make great peer reviewers

Library release checklist: docs if it’s sane, a book if your API leaks lifetimes, and a paper if the type signature is the proof

Rust points you to Chapter 8; Haskell hands you a DOI - somewhere between rustdoc and Haddock, your onboarding estimate just slipped from hours to quarters