More is not always better, though. E.g a modern book on compere construction will certainly teach more advanced techniques than the Dragon book or Wirth's Compiler Construction books, but I've yet to see any recent book on compiler construction that I'd prefer for the basics.

I'd argue that exactly because so much of it is cumulative, a lot of old technology texts stand up just fine when describing things like algorithms or a sub-field up to a certain level. The original paper on quicksort for example is just fine as an introduction to quicksort.

The books and papers that date are the ones that seek to tell you the best way doing something broad. An old text on the best way to sort in general will be date where descriptions of specific algorithms haven't.

> Technological books do not age as well, because technical knowledge is predominantly cumulative.

Tell that to Claude Shannon, Fred Brooks, and Ken Thompson. "A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits", "The Mythical Man-month" and "On Trusting Trust" have aged fine, I promise.

The Mythical Man-month has:

- aged extremely well in some ways (it still takes 9 months to make a baby no matter how many women are assigned to the project)

- aged poorly in others (disk space is no longer an issue when deciding whether to comment on code)

- remained ahead of its time in others (its a good idea to have an architect to ensure the conceptual integrity of a complex system, rather than to have developers hack it out a bit at a time in a series of scrums)

There are exceptions of course (and those are more about the fundamentals and abstractions than the technology -- e.g. Mythical Man Month is more about people and processes and development approaches than technology).

Thought note that even those are barely ancient, they are at best a century old -- Lewis was talking of Plato as an example and in general centuries old classics, not whether someone should read Zola or Hesse.

Today very few would suggest reading Newton to learn physics in university (e.g. use it as a textbook). At best they'd tell to to read Newton to see how the thinking went behind early discoveries. But people use Plato or Shakespeare or tons of other centuries old writers as their core textbook all the time in philosophy and literature departments.

Well-written technology books age quite well. For example, Hackers[0] has aged so well that the author has gone back over the last 30 years and added multiple appendices to cover what's happened since! The first couple chapters are available[1] on Project Gutenberg as well.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...

1: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=7...

>Well-written technology books age quite well. For example, Hackers[0] has aged so well that the author has gone back over the last 30 years and added multiple appendices to cover what's happened since

That's history.

Hackers is a history book.

The best geometry textbook hasn't changed for more than 2000 years.

Mathematics textbooks are just as likely as anything else to suffer from modern pedagogical theories that have not been tested by time and will come to be regarded as mistakes.

Professors in universities don't consider Euclid's textbook the "best" currently available text in geometry or use it on 101 geometry (except as a historical appreciation/reference).

It's the one with the most historical importance, but it hardly covers modern geometry.

Of course I'm aware of that, but it would be a shame if most people's first exposure to geometry was in university!

I would argue that the fact that it does not cover modern geometry is exactly what makes it valuable. Learning is best as a process of rediscovery.

The textbook has not changed, geometry did. The modern notion of geometry encompasses so much more that it is hard to describe in a few words.

Do you have a recommendation for best geometry textbook?

I suspect 'inimino is referring to Euclid's "Elements"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21076/21076-h/21076-h.htm

Indeed.

Not only do you learn geometry, but you participate in the same understanding of geometry that all later mathematicians started from.

I've always encouraged reading Euclid, Newton, Einstein. In my humble opinion, mathematics is much easier to understand historically, as it developed, and the best historical perspective comes from primary sources.

I must acknowledge, however, that for whatever reason very few people share my perspective on this.

It is indeed a widely held opinion that most (but not all, of course) original works are not the best sources to learn from. Over time ideas become clearer, better explanations arise, etc. Professional educators and instructors are important, too.

This is great, thank you so much!

Many thanks!