[WIP] Improve readme and many scripts.

[kurtwheeler]

Issue Number

#699

Purpose/Implementation Notes

This improves the readme a lot and improves a lot of our scripts to make running them easier.

This is a WIP that I think was almost done, but then I got distracted so I need to return to it to finish it up.

Types of changes

• Documentation

Functional tests

I don't remember anymore, so I should make sure to test this again.

Checklist

• Lint and unit tests pass locally with my changes
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• I have added necessary documentation (if appropriate)
• Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules

[kurtwheeler]

@Miserlou I've reviewed this and it looks pretty good to me. I think there's still a lot more we can improve as far as documentation goes, but this gets a lot of the worst stuff in better order. I haven't re-tested all the script changes yet, but I'll do that post-review in case there's major changes that necessitate another round of testing anyway.

For broader documentation improvements I think that we should consider coming up with an Information Architecture or something as a team so we know what topics we want need to have covered, what structure we want to use (i.e. one giant readme, multiple markdown files, a readthedocs page, etc), and what level of detail we want to cover. I'm happy to write lots of documentation, but the hardest part for me is knowing what to write about, what level of detail to write about it, and how to organize it.