Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Georg Wrede]

Simen Kjaeraas wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 
>> A chunky fragment of TDPL will hit Rough Cuts soon enough. I'm 
>> pondering whether I should be adding exercises to the book. Some books 
>> have them, some don't.
>>
>> Pros: As I'm writing, I've come up with some pretty darn cool exercise 
>> ideas.
>>
>> Cons: The book gets larger, takes longer to write, and I never solved 
>> the exercises in the books I've read, but then I'm just weird.
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> I love exercises. They're great for people who are trying to learn the
> language, and a great help to those of us who help them learn (not only
> teachers, I'm a student myself, and spend a lot of time reviewing other
> students' code to iron out their errors and teach them how things work).
> Also, if the exercises have solutions, I can challenge myself to make
> the solution faster, shorter, neater, or whatever.

Ah, forgot about that. A book author trying to write the theoretically 
best solution for an excercise is wasting his own time, won't be judged 
by them being sub-Perfect, and frustrates the reader who really happens 
to need the book.

The solutions have to be good-enough. Not more. But ideally, the problem 
description will guide the reader towards trying something, the result 
of which should tell him if he's understood the crux of the chapter.