29 ms·
For CS-related books, I think the original 1979 Hopcroft and Ullman is better than its successor editions.
by lsy 2y ago
For 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!