The Rookie Coder

Repetitive books & Texts

Hello,

One pattern that I would love to see gone from books these days is when a simple topic becomes long, repetitive and boring. The content of the book could be great but the minute you pass the line into being repetitive and boring, all your readers go away as well. A great example of this is the book “Code Complete” by Steve McConnell. It is a great book don’t get me wrong on that, but at times things get repeated over and over again, some points can be said two or three different times in different ways. This doesn’t lead to a better understanding of the book, it adds more confusion.

A great example of where you don’t see this is in The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth. They are a long series of books, but they are concise. The same point is never made over and over again, they are just told once in great detail. I think that really is the main point people need to remember when doing any writing, distinguish between a Verbose Explanation and a Repetitive Explanation. If you need to keep trying to explain something over and over again, your doing something wrong.

I think I have made my point, so this post ends now. (Not in three more paragraphs about the same point).