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Cainso t1_j15viqh wrote

It's almost like textbooks as a medium for knowledge has been obsolete for a while. I remember learning calculus and thinking that the textbook was confusing as hell, so I went and watched a free online video for it and they explained everything 1000x better.

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Dipteran_de_la_Torre t1_j18dh8z wrote

Textbooks are merely one tool for learning. They are great at laying out the broader field in a way that lets you see the forest through the trees. They are good at being comprehensive. There’s nothing wrong with textbooks.

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Cainso t1_j19w1mb wrote

A web page can do the exact same thing except it is far cheaper or outright free, and it can be updated and deployed to people instantly. In many fields a textbook can become outdated in literally just a few months, and now you wasted your money. But professors don't care because they're usually making money off of them.

Textbooks drain the already strained finances of countless students and are found to give old or flat out wrong information all the time. There is literally nothing a textbook does that an online alternative cannot, it's only negatives.

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