steshaw/plt

Add some simpler algebra books

Closed this issue · 1 comments

psibi commented

Disclaimer: I haven't read the algebra book you have listed on the repository (although I have a hard copy of one) and as a PL enthusiast I'm planning to read an algebra book soon once I complete the Velleman's book.

That being said I feel both the currently listed books are quite heavy. Maybe a much simpler book should be listed there ? And I'm not the only one feeling that. There was someone else on HN feeling the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760832

I personally don't feel someone can directly jump from Velleman's book to Advanced Modern Algebra. This "top to bottom" may not work. Also, would like to hear your opinion on this ? Did you go directly go to Joseph's Modern Algebra from Velleman's book ?

I've added the introduction to algebra book recommended at that link.

Unfortunately, the idea that you could simply read the books from top to bottom has really fallen apart as the number of books and resources has grown. Personally, I haven't finished reading Velleman. I've picked up some Algebra from "A Book of Abstract Algebra" but mostly from googling and reading Wikipedia and Wolfram Mathworld and the like. I'm currently trying to understand HoTT which you could say is "iterative deepening", simply "jumping ahead", or perhaps just dumb ;).