The author explicitly states:<p><pre><code>    If you think that your application really requires documentation, it’s too
    complicated, and it’s going to make your users frustrated.
</code></pre>
Additionally, the author says:<p><pre><code>    If you compare the experience of using both coffee machines, even if the
    [simpler] doesn’t give you the exact kind of coffee you want, you are still far
    better off.
</code></pre>
The author is explicitly saying that tools should not require documentation, and that <i>ease of making a choice is preferable to the potentially better outcomes of a more complex choice.</i><p>I believe that neither are absolutely true.<p>There is no mystery as to why these open source applications do what they do. They don&#x27;t because either they can&#x27;t know what you want them to do, or we programmers haven&#x27;t made the appropriate changes so they handle the cases where the program <i>can</i> infer what the user wants.<p>Side note: If this post does anything, I hope it&#x27;s to get someone to submit a pull request to NVM so it prints better help messages during first use (like suggesting setting up a default alias).