4 ms·
Older editions of which books were better than the new ones? (2010)
- stevetron 2y agoI have a copy of the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables, 27th Edition, CRC Press which I purchased as a suppliment to the text in a university calculus class I was taking. I should have picked a different year, they had both newer and older, but this one had a discounted price and was shrink-wrapped. It was also missing pages 153 - 184, which I soon discovered when I tried to look up something in the book that was listed in the table of contents, but was among the missing pages.
- lsy 2y agoFor CS-related books, I think the original 1979 Hopcroft and Ullman is better than its successor editions.
- gradstudent 2y ago^^ came to say this.
- kazinator 2y agoCame to say: Compilers: Principles Techniques and Tools after 1988.
- tiu 2y ago+1. To elaborate on this, the original Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, by John Hoffcroft and Jefferey Ullman (The one with the black cover is the 1979 edition). My instructor, even in 2024, made us use that one instead of the newer one. The other text if i recall right is Tanenbaum's Computer Networks book, where there is a significant portion of bloat that does not really fit there although my source for this is a review for the book. K&R 2nd Edition was rushed but I personally wouldn't claim the older edition was 'better'.
- kazinator 2y agoIt would be difficult for the older edition of K&R to be better because it's about a worse dialect of C, which doesn't offer type checking between function declarations and definitions.
- StefanBatory 2y agoMay I ask why? ... I just bought the second edition few days ago for my course.
- tiu 2y agoI am hazy on the details but my instructor briefly told us that the 1979 edition had better problems and had topics for the advanced undergraduate. The major thing for us as students was that the 1979 was much shorter to use and concise to the point of being a good handbook. (We do Theory of Computation/Formal Language and Automata Theory as a dual sem course meant to be both a junior and a senior class and thus the 1st edition suits the course better.) Googling gives https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/149072/hopcroft-ullman-1969-vs-1979 https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/149072/hopcroft-ullma... (see the question for the links)
- StefanBatory 2y agoThank you!
- pinewurst 2y agoK&R
- ww520 2y agoI found out the older edition of the Dragon book was way better than newer editions, which have many sections chopped off.
- tiu 2y agoThis is especially true if you consider all the "variations" - the second updated edition (global edition) which should rightfully be a third edition as it has two additional chapters and the two volume precursor texts: The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and Compiling Vol 1 & 2. The first one was also perfectly sized and not making it a bulkier text like the current CS curriculum texts (CLRS, OS:Concepts, Korth's DBMS etc.)
- tmoertel 2y agoIn one way, many newer editions of textbooks are worse than older ones: the printing. That's courtesy of modern print-on-demand systems, where instead of sharp offset printing you get glorified inkjet output that's noticably blurry. And instead of a bulletproof Smyth-sewn binding, your "hardcover" book gets you a short-lived perfect-bound paperback glued into a hard cover. When it comes to buying textbooks, unless a newer printing has corrections that I care about, I'll purchance an earlier printing to get the better book.
- perihelions 2y agoI wish there were a service that would unbind cheap books and sew them into a new binding of something bulletproof.
- goosedragons 2y agoThey exist. Book rebinders are a thing. I recall my school's library had a fair number of rebound books. There's probably one around you.
- tmoertel 2y agoThe problem is that the cheap books have already had their signatures cut into individual pages so that they can be perfect bound, basically running a strip of hot melt glue down the binding edge. At this point, you cannot rebind the pages in a way that will compare to the strength and durability of the original signatures.
- linguae 2y ago1. I’ve read that the first edition of Philip Wadler’s and Richard Bird’s Introduction to Functional Programming is better than the second edition, but having read neither, I can’t give an opinion one way or the other. 2. I have deep respect for older editions of Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, particularly those from the 1980s and 1990s. Part of it is my bias toward the classic Mac UI (though I love early Mac OS X through Snow Leopard), but another part is due to how well written these older guides are. The older Apple Human Interface Guidelines contain a lot of useful information that all developers should read; much of the advice given is timeless even after 30-40+ years. https://github.com/gingerbeardman/apple-human-interface-guidelines/blob/main/1995%20Macintosh%20Human%20Interface%20Guidelines.pdf https://github.com/gingerbeardman/apple-human-interface-guid...
- 47282847 2y agoCourtesy of the great Jef Raskin. Much of his work would still be highly relevant today if anyone actually cared about humane interfaces instead of using it to extract and refine dark patterns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin
- tmoertel 2y agoThanks for sharing that link! Through it I was able to find that Apple had design guidelines going back to the Apple 2 era! There's even a fascinating anecdote about a surprisingly challenging UI problem for the Apple //e computer: How can we get users to accurately tell us whether the computer is using a color or B&W monitor? I submitted it to HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452937
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- dr_kiszonka 2y agoCalculus Made Easy is a "thoroughly bad and vicious book." (I especially recommend the epilogue.)
- rahimnathwani 2y agoStraight and Crooked Thinking. New editions aren't by the original author. https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=336 https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=336
- lurk2 2y agoI find the vast majority of textbooks I have ever used tend to be overly verbose and graphically confused, with lots of inserts that distract from the reading process without adding any relevant information. If you read a textbook from fifty years ago, it notably reads like a book, with a coherent narrative structure. Contemporary textbooks read more like magazines; eliminating text boxes, colors, and columns would make them far easier to read. There’s also a tendency in contemporary textbooks to try to relate topics to concrete things in the real world. This is a key thing to do when you’re teaching to show students both how they can do something and why they would want to do it, but someone who is reading the book has already been convinced of the subject’s importance - they just need to be told what they need to know about it. This also leads to the book becoming dated faster because the examples draw on trends that go out of fashion, even though the principles of the field likely haven’t substantially changed since the 1960s.
- rramadass 2y ago> I find the vast majority of textbooks I have ever used tend to be overly verbose and graphically confused, with lots of inserts that distract from the reading process without adding any relevant information. Very true. Much of the "extra helpful content" is simply distracting, adds nothing much of value and is just padding. Contrast with old Soviet-era textbooks i point-to here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452118
- andai 2y ago>There’s also a tendency in contemporary textbooks to try to relate topics to concrete things in the real world. This seems to be a personality thing. I was doing a Linear Algebra course last year and complained at the lack of applications in our textbook. It seemed so strange to me. Here's this wonderful subject with literally dozens of wonderful, practical, illuminating real-world applications, which make the subject more concrete and easier to understand (and help you understand what's the point of all these obscure manipulations). And the book just... doesn't mention a single one of them? It felt both dishonest and pedagogically unskillful. I expressed these feelings to my classmates and was met with disgust: "We are pure mathematicians. We do not concern ourselves with applications!" Lucky for me, their disgust led them to discard several wonderful "Linear Algebra With Applications" books to the "free book pile", which I made excellent use of and greatly enjoyed. That being said, in most of these books the "applications" are confined to a bonus section at the end of each chapter, and do not interfere with the main text.
- PeterStuer 2y agoSomewhere in the 80's most basic science textbooks went from clear and concise to overly verbose and ladled to the hilt with colors and distracting "illustration" clutter making most later editions not just worse, but even an assault on learning and understanding.
- StefanBatory 2y agoI was at library some time ago and skimmed upon some old textbooks, written still during the Communist rule here - and they just were so much better in terms of explaining things. (as long as they weren't history stuff, naturally.)
- rramadass 2y agoSoviet era Science Books for everybody's enjoyment - https://mirtitles.org/ https://mirtitles.org/ Concise, Information-dense and to-the-point unlike the majority of books being published today. Also checkout all "Dover Publications" catalog on Science/Mathematics/Engineering. Most are old classics and very good - https://store.doverpublications.com/ https://store.doverpublications.com/
- andai 2y agoOn the first link, I had to scroll for a while to find a single book in English, and then a while for the next one. But they are indeed there. Perhaps adding tags or sections by language would be helpful.
- rramadass 2y agoWhat are you talking about? Most books on "Mirtitles" are in English (very good scans and some of them redone via LaTeX) and only a few are in other (mostly Indian) languages. Just search by name of book (eg. Calculus, Algebra etc.) or name of author (eg. Piskunov, Zeldovich etc.) or book series name (eg. Little Mathematics Library, Science for Everyone etc.) You can also click on the categories listed in blue below the "Follow" button on the right-hand side. The website is a blog and hence the books are listed in a series of entries. It is a real labour of love and i am grateful to the author(s) that such excellent scientific books are not lost in the mists of time but are available for free to the common public. Every Teacher/Student/Interested Layman should read these books. Finally, If you (or somebody else) wants to make the site better contact the site author and offer help; i am sure they would appreciate it.
- lukev 2y agoData and Reality, by William Kent. A timeless classic on the computational representation of, well, anything and everything. The third and currently only published edition, published posthumously, insists on adding a bunch of mid-2000s era design conceits based on OO paradigms. An absolute travesty.
- spratzt 2y agoKent’s original book is a masterpiece. He pretty much defined data modelling nearly fifty years ago. It’s depressing how little of real interest has been added since. For the reasons you rightly pointed out, the current edition is a disaster.
- kazinator 2y agoI tried to get through the book, but I was bored out of my mind. Chapter after chapter, it wasn't getting to any coherent point. I seem to remember that I really long initial chunk of the book consisted of presenting a barrage of self-evident problems in the modeling of real world entities in databases, without offering any solutions. There's no shortage of people that will fill your ears with problems, so tuning that kind of talk out after a while could actually be an evolutionary self-defense mechanism.
- rramadass 2y agoThe author's webpage on the book with excerpts for more info. - https://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm https://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm More of the author's works - https://www.bkent.net/catalogsource.htm https://www.bkent.net/catalogsource.htm
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- heavymetalpoizn 2y ago[dead]
- amboo7 2y agoEssentials of Programming Languages 1st ed. is special
- jhanschoo 2y agoPat Billingsley's Probability and Measure 3e. was reissued in an Anniversary Edition, which is just the same content but with several typographical errors.
- maciejw 2y agoLonely Planet. In 2013 we've done a Morocco backpacking trip with just a Lonely Planet guide - no phones, no Internet access, no pre-booked accomodation or transport. The guide contained maps, hostel suggestions, POI, transport options and a lot more. This year we brought the newest LP release to Thailand, and it was mostly useless - no transport or accommodation info, bad maps, generic POI descriptions. We are not buying another LP guide.
- Tijdreiziger 2y agoI’ve never been convinced by the value proposition of print travel guides. Would be interested to hear if anyone derives value out of them (beyond what you can find on Google and TripAdvisor for free).
- kjellsbells 2y agoThey can be quite good during the trip planning phase, like a helpful friend who makes suggestions that you are totally free to ignore. Having multiple threads of thought is easier with books, where you can riffle around the pages, maintain multiple contexts simultaneously, etc., compared to the very linear, one search at a time model that google search gives you. The other small advantage is that they work without power and cell service.
- vmilner 2y agoRichard Dawkins claims later editions of Darwin’s Origin of Species got worse because of trying to appease critics.
- andai 2y agoAn older edition of Think Java has an example that still amuses me greatly to this day. Appendix B.3, Page 222 (240 in pdf): https://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/thinkapjava.pdf https://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/thinkapjava.pdf
- _xerces_ 2y agoIn the realm of fiction, they released edited versions of Roald Dahl books that were more politically correct and designed to be less frightening to the fragile children of today.
- johnklos 2y agoComputer books change over time, for obvious reasons. The O'Reilly animal books are always good, but they've removed some useful information in later editions. For instance, the [sendmail bat book](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-4th-edition/9780596510299/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sendmail-4th-edition/97...) originally talked about all sorts of ways to deal with resource limits, particularly memory, because this was often an issue with servers in the early '90s. Later, memory became cheap and huge, so discussions about this were removed from later editions. Even when memory ceased being a limitation, though, learning about how to monitor and what to do about heavy resource usage remained important, so the removal was an overall loss. I wish that O'Reilly would make available for free the things they removed from later editions. I wish I'd've had the money and space to buy the original editions of many of the animal books. I figured they'd live at the bookstore until I did, but then bad things happened, and now bookstores are rare. Perhaps one day I'll find some.
- pengaru 2y agoIME with technical computer software books, the good ones worth reading and dedicating bookshelf space to anyways: The first editions tend to describe a simpler form of the subject, and contain the most distilled and succinct description covering the minimum required salient points for publication. I'm pretty sure it's without exception. I have no multi-edition technical books that shrink in size in subsequent editions. So I end up with collections of editions for books of this type I really value, preferring to reach for the earliest editions first, and only after I can't find what I'm looking for, do I proceed to the subsequent editions. Old programming/operating system design books are such a pleasure to read. Simpler times make for simpler, easier to understand documentation. It sucks to come at a foreign, complex, mature system in reverse chronology.