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I must admit some general annoyance at the recent trend in labeling 20-page web-only how-tos "books". Though, given that the Sinatra source itself is under 2k

• shabda 17y ago
  Measuring programming (books) progress by lines of code (lines of text) is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight
  • wheels 17y ago
    That's trendy to say, and there's a lot of truth to it, but the fact of the matter is that the number of lines of code in a project does convey useful information about its complexity. More accurate would be to say that it's only one dimension in a multi-dimensional metric. Just like with an airplane, if we add in the weight and what it's made of and used for all of the sudden it becomes a pretty interesting metric.
    • shabda 17y ago
      (Sorry if a quote sounded empty and cute, I will elaborate my thoughts.) - Sintara is small (and arguably beautiful), a book on it should be small. Being small doesnot mean it shouldnot be called book. - Wasn't our biggest gripe with J2ee monster was the enormous complexity, and to handle them the large books required. Wasn't that why rails Django were hailed as game changers? http://i44.tinypic.com/98uhs6.png http://i44.tinypic.com/98uhs6.png Smaller frameworks with smaller learning curve and books take that even further.
• silentbicycle 17y ago
  I'm all for short-but-informative books* , but twenty pages is a booklet. It would be a good size for a chapter in a book on web tools or particularly good Ruby libraries, though. * Such as seemingly everything Brian Kernighan has co-written.