I disagree. Many advanced books on any subject would end up being huge volumes with 90% of the pages serving as introduction to the core idea discussed by the b

I disagree. Many advanced books on any subject would end up being huge volumes with 90% of the pages serving as introduction to the core idea discussed by the book. Not every book about programming needs to begin with detailed description and examples of what the conditional statement or for loop is. You can arrange books in series with prerequisites and this is how people learn new subjects. Your idea seems comparable to demanding that all C/C++ programs expand all their includes inline or that all Java programs that need a HashMap implement one rather than importing java.util.HashMap. Perhaps a better solution is for books to suggest prerequisites to read or at least enumerate their assumptions about reader's prior knowledge. Some books actually do that.