Re: Request For Reviewers

somebody wrote:

On the other hand, having to look up relevant source code on a
computer instead of reading from a book kind of defeats the purpose,
why not have a pdf then? <snip> If code is included, I can always skip
reading them if I don't want to, so besides weight, there's no
disadvantage to including code and a definite advantage.

This is why I hardly ever read programming books involving long elaborated
examples.

A long code listing seriously disrupts the text (and my thought process)
unless, of course, it is relegated to an appendix. But if the author's point
really cannot be made without a multi-page chunk of source code, then you've
actually got a "how-to" course which cannot be done efficiently away from a
computer anyhow. When I see such listings, I am firstly agonised over the
low signal-to-noise ratio because the majority of the code is ho-hum and
serves no other purpose than pleasing a fictitious compiler and/or tester.
I am not a compiler and I couldn't care less if 90% of the boilerplate code
was removed in these examples, so as to focus on the points that really
matter.
It would save quite a few trees, too!

Secondly, and this is a personal thing, I just can't handle reading source
code listings in print. I need to be able to scroll through the code line by
line, word by word if necessary, letting syntax highlighting, code folding,
parenthesis matching, drill-down navigation, help insight and other miracles
of my favorite editor help me work through the code. Seeing any nontrivial
code example in print is for me about as useful as taking violin lessons
from a CD player (ducking for analogy police intervention!).

--
Kristofer


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