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.
