I think I appreciate the point you're trying to make and I agree that people would do well to learn to read the source. However, I disagree with your statement "No matter what the documentation says, the source code is the ultimate truth, the best and most definitive and up-to-date documentation you're likely to find." (Good) documentation is a description of what the software designer/programmer wanted to write, the code is what they ended up writing. If all goes well, these two are the same. But if mistakes were made, odds are only one of the two is wrong and the other offers a clue what was really intended. Note that this also implies that, sometimes, the code can help fix broken documentation.