3 ms·
Carefully crafted textbooks are comprehensive, balanced, and have a good learning curve (not too steep, not too shallow). Perhaps as importantly, they are edite
by danieldk 11y ago
Carefully crafted textbooks are comprehensive, balanced, and have a good learning curve (not too steep, not too shallow). Perhaps as importantly, they are edited and contain far fewer errors than a typical blog or Stack Overflow post. As such, they are invaluable as an introduction to new topics.
Just to give an example: reading Hopcroft, Motwani & Ullman is far more effective than trying to scrape together automata theory via blog posts or Stack Overflow. As a beginner, you can't even identify what is correct and what is wrong.
- gravypod 11y agoMaybe it's just the books for my course, but I have never seen a book with up to day information, a lack of spelling/subject matter errors, and an easily digestible format. Every textbook I buy has turned into a huge paper weight. Can you recommend some textbooks that aren't like that? I'm interested in EE, CE, and CS (Software engineering, DSP, and concurrency).
- danieldk 11y agoMaybe it's just the books for my course, but I have never seen a book with up to day information Basic CS theory does not really get outdated. There's a couple of dozens book that I could recommend. Anything from Sedgewick & Wayne to Hopcroft, Motwani & Ullman.
- gravypod 11y agoThe theory might not be out of date, but the notes on implementation are quickly outpaced.
- emmelaich 11y agoAnd Kernighan's writing really is a few levels above the typical quality of textbooks. K&R really is a classic; even as a beginning programmer it rewarded so much on first and almost every subsequent reading.