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I was just thinking about asking HN about free books that will get me started in phython. This seems to have a quite a few [0]. Has HN read any of these or recommends anything in particular? (I went through learning python the hard way a few years back and have been slacking off) ---------------------------- [0] http://greenteapress.com/wp/
if you are not able to read and understand a 1000-page textbook, then you are in the wrong place, end of story.
btw, driving a schoolbus does not require a lot of reading.
1. Many textbooks are written to be understood, but they vary a lot by field and class level. Generally, I think lower level textbooks best meet Downey's standards.
As you get into what is junior/senior (300-400 level) classes, there is not always a neat textbook available.
2. I disagree with 10 pages per week per course. I think the expectations of what students can read per week are too low. I attended a couple different schools, and one has a reputation of having high expectations of students, and most students tend to rise up to the challenge. I think most professors don't expect enough, and what a degree represents is watered down.
I do feel strongly that busywork and pointless readings should be avoided. Pages per week should not be some sort of metric for learning, but 10 well-written information-rich pages a week per course is not usually going to be a challenge.
Nationally, most students don't even read much of what is assigned, so telling students to not read a book if it has 500 pages won't change the status quo.
3. The idea that writing a textbook is easy is crazy. Even if you ignore the other requirements put upon professors, it is time-consuming to do it right. Even short niche books, think O'Reilly type stuff, take time to produce.
It should be possible to buy student textbooks by chapter and print your own book. Most cities with college have few high quality printing services.
"Learning from Data" is a reasonable example of the type of textbook the author is asking for. There is something to be said about the value of "reference" books, however. Maybe reference books shouldn't be used in classes, but there can be great value in a 1000 page book that has a complete discussion of everything you'd expect.
Another interesting tactic they employed was an indicator on the page that the reader could skip ahead to another page (usually before a challenging proof) without losing the chapter's main concepts.
For high-level math courses, the best I've seen is a reader written by the professor, combined with an optional 1000 page tome. The reader goes with the lectures, and is focused on the actual material of the course. The reader, combined with your notes, basically covers the lectures. Meanwhile, if you need another take on the material, or some wider context, the 1000 page tome is always there. This works especially w…
My higher-level math courses were pure mathematics courses, and we pretty much always used Springer textbooks, which were only a few hundred pages long and the size of a normal paperback (i.e., not the size of, say, CLRS). When we didn't use Springer textbooks, we used other textbooks similar in size and length (e.g., [0]). I found these textbooks to be completely manageable to read as a student, and they were the best textbook-related learning experiences of my undergraduate years.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Galois-Correspondence-Ma...
I was just thinking about asking HN about free books that will get me started in phython. This seems to have a quite a few [0]. Has HN read any of these or recommends anything in particular? (I went through learning python the hard way a few years back and have been slacking off) ---------------------------- [0] http://greenteapress.com/wp/
Most commenters here should re-read the article and internalize the body of work created.