> You can always check out relevant section using the online book or the pdf.
You are right. I misinterpreted your original comment. This is certainly a drawback. In the future, I plan to reduce redundancy, by offering skippable sections. However, in some cases, it is entirely unavoidable and that certainly sucks.
> The externally imposed constraints of the Primer system defeat the greatest advantage of self-learning; that the student can control, prioritize and take ownership of his learning program
Though I understand your POV, I disagree with your premise. I believe more options, leads to worse effectiveness. The lesser decisions you have to make for yourself, the faster you can complete/perform a task.
Primer makes a lot of decisions for you. There are no ten courses for machine learning, just one course. No ten courses on Python teaching the same thing, just one. There is less course content overlapping when you go from Python - I (which covers basics of Python) to Python-II (Object-Oriented Programming)
Thank you for your feedback.