You make good points. A person that doesn't understand the distributive property, going into Calculus 1 is not the person that is going to understand Rudin or

You make good points. A person that doesn't understand the distributive property, going into Calculus 1 is not the person that is going to understand Rudin or Spivak on their own without guidance. Yet, people in mathematics communities would recommend Spivak or Rudin anyway and look down on them if they used Stewart or Thomas. To them if you aren't learning a subject in the fullest rigor possible, then it isn't worth learning. It doesn't matter if the person doesn't even know the basics, they blindly recommend these type of books regardless. These are excellent books once you already seen the material before, not so much for the average person that doesn't know what the distributive property is.