Computer Books and Long Listings
It bugs me that authors fill pages with excessive code listings. Why waste paper on irrelevant excerpts if the code is available by download?
This rant was set off while reading the recent ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook from O'Reilly. Authors Michael Kittel and Geoffrey LeBlond have done a good job in writing a slew of very usable tips and solutions. In fact, I found tip 21.6, Saving and Reusing HTML Output, very handy the other day.
However, I question their listings - some solutions are over a dozen pages! Four pages (two each for C# and VB) for expansively-spaced and fully-commented Gets and Sets just seems like a waste. If authors can take the time to make the relevant snippets bold, why can't they edit out the irrelevant? And why the repetitive XML data used for the samples?
As an author, I know the pressures of hitting deadlines and having sufficient page count. However, ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook would be just as valuable - or more so - at 700 concise pages as it is with nearly a thousand pages with padded listings.