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I make a habit of finishing everything I read, to exercise my ability to maintain focus. But that only works by being extremely selective of the material I begi
by wahern 7y ago
I make a habit of finishing everything I read, to exercise my ability to maintain focus. But that only works by being extremely selective of the material I begin, particularly books.
If a book is skimmable, why bother? Presuming the author has something genuinely interesting and substantive to say, there are often better alternatives. For example, books written by scholars are often preceded by long-form journal articles which more concisely present the material. And if you were mistaken in your belief they had something interesting to say, then you've only wasted 20 pages of your time, not 400; yet you can still say you gave them the full measure of your attention and a fair chance to persuade you.
- hinkley 7y agoIn a lot of ways, I find myself initially trusting a tech writer whose book is 250 pages over one whose book is 400. The courage to stop at a couple hundred pages when you've said everything that needs to be said is not something everyone has. I think this may be one aspect of why I love 'Refactoring' and hate 'Design Patterns'. It has so much more information in a book half the size.
- puzzledobserver 7y agoWould you extend your reasoning to TAOCP as well? Not trying to put you in a spot: I would, and I agree. I wonder how much of the praise devoted to TAOCP is from people who have actually read the books.
- esfandia 7y agoI don't think it's fair to compare 'Refactoring' and 'Design Patterns' based on their respective number of pages. They are both catalogs, but they are cataloguing different things. A design pattern IMO is harder to explain and understand than a refactoring, it needs to provide some context, and by definition you need to prove that it qualifies as a pattern by showing a few examples found "in the wild". Also, the authors had to show how these patterns can be implemented in different programming languages (Smalltalk and C++). Fowler could get away with one simple example of a refactoring in Java each time. Having said that, Fowler's prose is super clear, something that cannot be necessarily said about GoF, (IMO of course)...