Thanks for your recommendations! Your comment made me realize I was not specific enough in my list of rules, so I modified the third rule to the following:
“You must briefly name the other books you’ve read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.”
Would you please do us the favor of naming the other books you’ve read on these subjects, and why your recommendations are superior to them? That would be much appreciated.
A problem is that in many cases it was long enough ago (e.g. I got into C programming in the 1980s, C++ around 1990) that I don’t remember the names of the other books I read. The ones that stuck in my mind were the memorably good ones. (Memorably bad things can do likewise of course, but few textbooks fall into that category—the point of this post after all is that textbooks tend to have higher standards than most media.)
rwallace,
Thanks for your recommendations! Your comment made me realize I was not specific enough in my list of rules, so I modified the third rule to the following:
“You must briefly name the other books you’ve read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.”
Would you please do us the favor of naming the other books you’ve read on these subjects, and why your recommendations are superior to them? That would be much appreciated.
A problem is that in many cases it was long enough ago (e.g. I got into C programming in the 1980s, C++ around 1990) that I don’t remember the names of the other books I read. The ones that stuck in my mind were the memorably good ones. (Memorably bad things can do likewise of course, but few textbooks fall into that category—the point of this post after all is that textbooks tend to have higher standards than most media.)