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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Personally I hate these kinds of books. This style, long-winded "cheery" explanations, constantly "playful", as if I was a small child that couldn't hold my attention for 2 minutes before you had to dangle a colourful toy in front of me. Like they're afraid to be serious for a moment (so many exclamation marks). I'm not here for humour, or to have a pleasant conversation. I'm here to learn. Just give me clear and concise, with minimal fluff.

If anyone is familiar with it, Landau and Lifschitz is my kind of book ;)

EDIT: I've just skimmed the Hutton book. It looks great! That's what I mean. You don't have to be dense or incomprehensible or dry. Just stick to the point and explain as clear and concise as possible.

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> Like they're afraid to be serious for a moment (so many exclamation marks).

I rarely speak with enthusiasm... but teaching or explaining programming to people just gets me really, really excited. Putting myself in the shoes of a novice who is about to have some realization about the nature of an algorithm makes me shiver with anticipatory glee.

It's hard not to put that into my writing. It's not fake in the slightest—it's the only time I can let it shine through just how much I love this stuff, and it'd be fake to hide it. Even the constant "cute analogies" are part-and-parcel of this exuberance—symptoms of temporary hypomania brought about during the writing process.

Certainly, I could go back and edit all this stuff away. But, really, should I? I never had a role-model who was as excited about programming as I am. I wish I had had one. I, therefore, find it hard to restrain myself from being that person for others.

Can be cheery, playful and concise - The Little Schemer was a pleasure to read cover to cover.

I can vouch for that! It's more the endless faffing about and the distracting interruptions that irk me. In TLS the whimsy never got in the way of the learning.

I suspect few physics students would agree with you about the didactic value of LL. The audiences for the two types of books couldn't be more different.

They're definitely not the books you want for your primary learning source, but as a 2nd source pretty good for sure as long as you're comfortable filling in computation details between equations.

I learned Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics from Landau ;) It's a challenge to be sure. And it's dense. But actually the fact they tell you the ideas but not necessarily every detail sorta forces you to work things out in paper as you read, which I found very fruitful.

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