|
Message
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@z...>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 11:45:35 -0700
Subject: Re: [oc] Verilog coding style for Open Cores-RTL - Case in pointSHA1
Charles Lepple wrote:
>>
>> Something I never understood. Isn't it a conflict of interest
>> if the Professor tells his students to buy a book that he wrote ?
>> I mean it could be total crap, and nobody would know ....
>
> It's a courtesy to the professor to use the book. A somewhat idealistic
> view is that local use of the textbook will help shake out any errors in
> the examples. In reality, it forces the student to either question the
> correctness of the information presented, or to just be lazy and hope
> for a curve because nobody bothered to figure out what the professor
> intended to say.
>
> That's why some consider it "academic incest" to earn more than one or
> two degrees from the same school-- using your example, you would
> hopefully find out whether or not the book was "total crap" while
> studying at another institution.
>
On the other hand, it *does* have the advantage that the book will be
typically be written to match the teaching style of the professor. I
had at least one class in which the professor spent more than half the
time arguing against what the book said, using different terminology,
and handing out completely illegible hand-written notes. As you can
imagine, the exams where written to his notes, not to the book.
-hpa
|
 |
Browse
