Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Sean Kelly" <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote in message 
news:guipr4$jl9$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "BCS" <none at anon.com> wrote in message 
>> news:a6268ff5d238cba2e80afc1d36 at news.digitalmars.com...
>>
>>> (That and the fact most profs never worry about what a book costs when 
>>> they spend your money)
>>
>> Now *that* one I definitely *don't* have any difficulty believing. Hell, 
>> half of the college classes out there amount to nothing more than US$2k 
>> book recommendations.
>
> That hasn't been my experience.  I've had a lot of professors who've said 
> whether the previous (used) version of a book would work for the course, 
> and for reading-intensive courses I've ever had professors who xeroxed 
> massive amounts of material to hand out to spare students the expense of 
> buying books.  Another option at many universities is to go to the school 
> library.  They generally have all the course material available for 
> students to use... they just can't leave with it.
>

Oh, I've certainly had a lot of instructors like that too. Maybe about half 
of them. But the problem is, for such a terrible problem, anything remotely 
near that figure is an absolutely horrible ratio.

> I also don't understand why professors seem to always choose academic 
> textbooks on the subject when I know there are infinitely better trade 
> books available (which I generally already own).

Hear hear!!

There's also another phenomenon I've noticed: Classes that never use the 
book, *except* for heavy use of it during the first two weeks. Call me 
paranoid, but I can't imagine any realistic explanation for that other than 
trying to trick students who have learned not to buy books until they see 
the class *really does* require it (as opposed to the classes that merely 
claim to require it.)

Heck, one of the schools I went to, I know for a fact that the instructors 
were *required* to choose a "required" book for their course and have the 
bookstore order it. A handful of instructors would say on the first day of 
class "Did you get the required book for this course? No? Good. Don't. And 
if you have, go take it back. They just required me to pick one. We won't 
use it, so don't get it."