Hi,
As the name of topic suggests, this is on classic texts. However, the domain considered is a narrow one. This is about technical books, mostly computer science books. This is one of the series of informal discussions that I keep on having with my friend Raghvendra. Raghvendra is from a Mathematics background and helps me with Maths, especially Algebra. I complement this by helping him (as well as I can) in the CS stuff. More importantly, he is fun-loving, sometimes lazy and casual like me and so we gel well :-)
Coming to the topic, this is an observation we had on the books that students study in colleges generally. Our observation leads us to conclude that most students prefer to read books that are easy-going, non-challenging and quick-fix solutions to exams. Let me once again remind you that this discussion is technical books centric, India centric.
Let me start with CS books. When you observe what books people read for programming these mostly turn out to be Kanetkars, Balagurusamys, Schaums, Teach Yourselfs, Schildts, Eckels and stuff like that. There is one fact I am going to tell you and I can bet on this. If you really want to learn a programming language, understand it's subtleties and nuances, develop your understanding so that you can appreciate deeper issues, you got to read the programming language creator(s) book PERIOD ... Why is this so ? Let me start with where these other books fail. First of all, if you take any of these books to a really good programmer, he will tell you how many incorrect statements they have. A classic example is telling that C is both call-by-value and call-by-reference. Second they talk too much on something and then miss out critical points which leave your understanding incomplete and dangerously insufficient. Third, they teach you bad coding styles. Look at code written in K&R, Stroustrup etc ... they look beautiful and elegant. Fourth, many of these books really mess-up your learning as they take you unnecessarily into things you don't need when you are starting to learn a language (stuff like hardware interaction, graphics, Windows and Linux programming). Last, and the most important and interesting reason is that they don't force you to think, they are too easy going. The creator books are difficult for beginners, I agree but, if you proceed patiently and put in some effort, you understand the right concepts and these things stick into your mind. You save a lot of time and effort later on.
Maths. There are so many classics, really wonderful books like Herstein's Algebra, Thomas-Finney's Calculus, Erwin Kreyzig's Engg Mathematics. I got some other names like Rudin's Real Analysis text, Dugundji's and Joshi's texts on Topology. Though, I really can't tell you why they are beautiful but Raghvendra prefers to read classics in Mathematics like I do in CS, so I believe they are going to be good. I am reading Herstein's Algebra and it is so wonderful when you have that AHA! moment, you can see the beauty that's there in those abstract structures. Thomas-Finney was one book I loved simply because of its style of presentation and the way it kept you showing how the mathematics related to some real world situations. Do you feel shaky about your concepts on limits, continuity and differentiability ? Pick up Thomas-Finney, give it a couple of days and you will see these things will come so naturally to you ever after.
Physics. Feynman's Lectures. Absolute joy to read this trilogy. You feel like attending a real lecture and the insights that you gain are awesome. Equations come but there are interpretations, the emphasis on understanding the content of equations is throughout the books. The difference between how a mathematician sees equations and what they mean to a physicist is something really important to know if you are serious about Physics, or are interested.
Hope, I got you to rethink on the topic of choosing a book when studying something. Let me know what you think, this is a nice thing to discuss :-)
As the name of topic suggests, this is on classic texts. However, the domain considered is a narrow one. This is about technical books, mostly computer science books. This is one of the series of informal discussions that I keep on having with my friend Raghvendra. Raghvendra is from a Mathematics background and helps me with Maths, especially Algebra. I complement this by helping him (as well as I can) in the CS stuff. More importantly, he is fun-loving, sometimes lazy and casual like me and so we gel well :-)
Coming to the topic, this is an observation we had on the books that students study in colleges generally. Our observation leads us to conclude that most students prefer to read books that are easy-going, non-challenging and quick-fix solutions to exams. Let me once again remind you that this discussion is technical books centric, India centric.
Let me start with CS books. When you observe what books people read for programming these mostly turn out to be Kanetkars, Balagurusamys, Schaums, Teach Yourselfs, Schildts, Eckels and stuff like that. There is one fact I am going to tell you and I can bet on this. If you really want to learn a programming language, understand it's subtleties and nuances, develop your understanding so that you can appreciate deeper issues, you got to read the programming language creator(s) book PERIOD ... Why is this so ? Let me start with where these other books fail. First of all, if you take any of these books to a really good programmer, he will tell you how many incorrect statements they have. A classic example is telling that C is both call-by-value and call-by-reference. Second they talk too much on something and then miss out critical points which leave your understanding incomplete and dangerously insufficient. Third, they teach you bad coding styles. Look at code written in K&R, Stroustrup etc ... they look beautiful and elegant. Fourth, many of these books really mess-up your learning as they take you unnecessarily into things you don't need when you are starting to learn a language (stuff like hardware interaction, graphics, Windows and Linux programming). Last, and the most important and interesting reason is that they don't force you to think, they are too easy going. The creator books are difficult for beginners, I agree but, if you proceed patiently and put in some effort, you understand the right concepts and these things stick into your mind. You save a lot of time and effort later on.
Maths. There are so many classics, really wonderful books like Herstein's Algebra, Thomas-Finney's Calculus, Erwin Kreyzig's Engg Mathematics. I got some other names like Rudin's Real Analysis text, Dugundji's and Joshi's texts on Topology. Though, I really can't tell you why they are beautiful but Raghvendra prefers to read classics in Mathematics like I do in CS, so I believe they are going to be good. I am reading Herstein's Algebra and it is so wonderful when you have that AHA! moment, you can see the beauty that's there in those abstract structures. Thomas-Finney was one book I loved simply because of its style of presentation and the way it kept you showing how the mathematics related to some real world situations. Do you feel shaky about your concepts on limits, continuity and differentiability ? Pick up Thomas-Finney, give it a couple of days and you will see these things will come so naturally to you ever after.
Physics. Feynman's Lectures. Absolute joy to read this trilogy. You feel like attending a real lecture and the insights that you gain are awesome. Equations come but there are interpretations, the emphasis on understanding the content of equations is throughout the books. The difference between how a mathematician sees equations and what they mean to a physicist is something really important to know if you are serious about Physics, or are interested.
Hope, I got you to rethink on the topic of choosing a book when studying something. Let me know what you think, this is a nice thing to discuss :-)
2 comments:
Nice observation...and I must admit I've enjoyed reading a couple of those from the list namely, The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie and The Feynman lectures in Physics.
But I believe the other category of books you've mentioned (I'd say commercial books) are a result of the fact that the new generation languages keep on adding a layer of abstraction thereby depriving us of the core fundamentals. Also they teach more of an application as opposed to core fundamentals. So they do have an importance of the own (not all but some) but but but....as a student one shouldn't skip the fundamentals.
Interesting point, Amit ... glad you read through all of my fundas :D ... I agree that these books do satisfy some concerns as you mentioned but, even in the case of newer languages you can witness the proliferation of such not-so-good texts. For example, Perl, Java, Python are newer languages as compared to C but even here the creator texts are much better. Yes, you might learn the language from an application viewpoint, quicker, but you need to come back to the creator texts once in a while if you are really serious.
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