This is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#22It's such a shame there isn't a Kindle/ePub/PDF version. I guess I'm off to kill another tree.
To anyone looking to purchase themselves some dead trees, I recommend that you pick up an older second hand copy. I have it on good authority that the recent 20th anniversary reprint is of a much lower quality, with crappy thin pages and less clear type.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#23It's such a shame there isn't a Kindle/ePub/PDF version. I guess I'm off to kill another tree.
There's a pdf on tpb, so there should be a legitimate version somewhere.
I have the original as hardcover, but also wanted to be able to read on the go on the iPad, so I downloaded the ebook.
It's a scan with OCR. Unfortunately the OCR is bad on many parts of the page - random occurences of %, ' and other characters are common. Also some words are totally unreadable.
Overall, I still read sometimes on the iPad, but having to go back to the hardcover if I'm totally lost.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#24This is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
I interested in your opinion - could you elaborate further?
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
Could you elaborate? I read it this summer, and while I found that the glue between the chapters was a bit weak(I think the central theme isn't strong enough, no wonder he prefaces the 2nd edition trying to explain what the heck the book is about), it was a pleasure to read. I believe I had an intuition for Gödel's proof(which I have already forgotten), while I probably never have had the guts of trying to understand the real thing.
So, you mean "awful" like, at some level of Math/Physics the whole thing seems fuzzy and inaccurate or just "awful" even for non Physics Phds.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
I went to the same grad school as the author did and got a PhD in physics there. Most of the professors I knew who taught the guy said the same thing to me about the book. It's just awful.
I still can not make out whether you have read the book or not.
You went to the same school as the author(I presume you mean the OP in the reddit thread), and you knew the professors who taught the guy didn't like the book. Is that all you are basing your opinion on?
GEB isn't a physics book, so I don't see how "the professors who taught this guy" say matters - it's all too common that people don't like books that directly relate to their fields; especially so when they deeply vested in their field.
Also, opinion is divided on usefulness of other seminal works as well; to quote a few from comp. sci. - SICP, K&R, TAOCP.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#28How do you know someone's read GEB? They tell you.
How do you know someone hasn't read GEB? They pass snarky remarks when someone mentions they have read GEB.
That aside, offering to help people with a difficult book is different from flaunting having read the book.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#29It's the kind of book you can spend a few days reading or a life time, just like "Zen and the art of motorcycle repair". I've read half of it in 8 years, so maybe it's time to redo the whole process from beginning to end.
Just like ZMM, GED is also the kind of book that tends to split people into those that love it and those that hate it. Personally, I loved GED and hated ZMM. Similarly, I know people who find GED overrated, pompous and shallow.
Re: 6 month read-through/discussion of Gödel, Escher, Bach starting 1/17 on Reddit
#30This is such a awful book. Pure hipster material.
Is this a joke? I can only guess that you tried to read it, and didn't understand it.
Let's not dismiss the guy's opinion off-hand.. I also know people whose opinions I respect and who find GED pretentious and shallow. Personally, I found it extremely well written (although somewhat nonuniform) and extremely insightful as well. I just wish I had read it earlier, say, when I was 14, rather than after a CS education.