who reads readme.txt files?

Me. I take a lot of effort to write these.

To reflect on myself, what I’ve done.
How my coworkers act upon them.
How easily let them understand my knowledge.

And yet, here you are.

Putting me in tears.
You can hurt people like that.

It’s not funny.

EDIT: Where is my whiskey

This might just be a me thing, but I feel more inclined to read a README if it has a .md extension rather than a .txt extension.

@brocklee It just depends on the date, you know

When you are too cheap to buy original softwares CDs, you find the crack instructions in the readme.

@iamai yeah and a couple of degenerates that didn't read README, all caps named file, that expect that dear lord will serve them individual instructions.
TL;DR it's best to download repository and follow their instructions, I suppose

I do read them xD
Even though if its not crack notes xD

I'm usually very submissive to the point where I do what filenames tell me to.

More likely to read a readme.md than a readme.txt

I do, although I also prefer Markdown to plain text these days.

i'm always happy to have a good README.md that goes with a project. Makes life easier for folks out there, and doesn't take that much time for devs to make one, since they are in the matter of the project anyway.

Personally i love README.md + doxygen docs.

I don't. I read README.md files tho =]
Ngl most of those are excellent documentation for whatever tool|library|program it's for.

I read both md and txt, readme, instructions, install... Whatever, someone put them there for a reason

I guess they are read more since we use repository services like Bitbucket and GitHub. They put the README files on full display (and other software/platforms seem to follow)

Usually the CD-key is in the Readme...

Don't read it and then complain that it sucks