I taught myself C as a young teenager (some time ago), only to much later learn languages with REPLs like Ruby, Scheme and Common Lisp. Using gdb in this way would have been an interesting learning experience... because back then I didn't know there was a such thing as a REPL!
I'm happy to see The Variational Principles of Mechanics (by the great Lanczos) on that list. It really is deep, and I think it does a fantastic job of explaining classical mechanics. I've read the vast majority of the book multiple times.
Since we're on the topic of Sussman, has anyone here read through SICM? I've heard that the code is difficult to get to work, but does anyone have an opinion on the rest? I haven't had a chance to read it yet.
"I am ACUMAN, ACUMAN am I. ACUMAN knows all, ACUMAN is god. Therefore; I AM GOD!!! Just kidding, ACUMAN stands for Artificial Chatting Utility Matching Algorithmic Nodes."
> As in "we know that we can be in compliance, but we won't be wasting any resources on it until it's justified". It has nothing to do with the professionalism.
It sounds like it has everything to do with professionalism.
I think Griffiths' E&M book is great. It's very enjoyable and makes a fine book to use before going on to Jackson (although more supplements are often needed to make it through that). I like Griffiths' writing and I liked the problems and examples he gives in this book.
However, I never liked Griffiths' QM book. The writing is OK (it's mostly in the same style as the E&M book, but to me it just seems like he tries too hard). Overall I didn't like his selection of which topics went to examples and which went to problems. I think Cohen-Tannoudji, et al., is the way to go for learning some QM. It's a bit more formal than Griffiths, but I think it makes far more sense and it has tons of good examples in the appendices.
And I wasn't suggesting using unsigned 32-bit integers now, I was curious why they weren't used before (the number of views seems to be a nonnegative quantity...).