The point being that you can most likely get close enough without these tools - hence my “100%” in that quote. I highly doubt you can truly assess the benefit of this without even a working prototype. If you truly want to make the product the only way is to actually make the product and go from there. No one can use something that doesn’t exist yet.
I doubt most Julia (or in any language) packages were built completely perfect the first time. I don’t think the developers of e.g. Makie.jl or DifferentialEquations.jl (the whole SciML ecosystem really) would crucify me (
) if I were to assume that, in their first iteration, they probably weren’t even close to 100% perfect. Overtime they developed and became extremely important tools that people use and appreciate daily (and even then, they aren’t perfect - nothing is). There are other packages that could be given as examples but those are my two most used.
As another example, one of my more useful packages is in an OK state currently with ~70 stars (just mentioning stars since you mention it as a metric - I wouldn’t suggest you focus on this metric so hard to begin with), but I wouldn’t say it’s that close to perfect and I’m still more than happy with it. I wouldn’t have gotten that far with it if I truly wanted it to be 100% perfect in the first iteration and, as a developer, I am quite proud of it. Even if nobody but me ever used the package I would probably be fine with the outcome since I have learned a lot in developing it (and made many mistakes along the way).
You should not let these obstacles burden you from doing what you want to do and do it for your own satisfaction. Maybe you will find better ways or find that they are not even that much of an obstacle.