quote:Original post by dede
[...]Top-Down teaches you the concepts, as an abstract algorthm. It usually skips on the implementation, but if you understand the algorthm, then you can implement it.

Bottom-Up teaches you the code, and teaches a paticular way of doing something. They usually don''t go in depth with the paticular reasons WHY you would code this segment a certain way, they just give you it.[...]

First of all, I''d disagree that understanding an algorithm means you can implement it. I understood the huffman compression algorithm a long time before I could implmenet it. I also understood all the required data structures, but I just coulnt get working code for a REALLY long time. I didn''t get it until I saw somebody else''s implentation. After that, it was trivial to code it from scratch my way to fit in the project I needed it for.

I personally prefer ''Top-Down'' followed by ''Bottom-Up'' so I can understand how something works and then see a few ways it was implemented it so I can decide how to best implement it myself. When I only get the top-down teaching, I usually end up making the same mistakes that other people have made for the last hundred years and its nice to be able to learn from others mistakes instead of having to repeat them.

quote:Original post by NaliXL

quote:Original post by Cybertron
Don''t complain about Windows/DirectX/C++ because thats what everybody uses. It''s the target market.

Sounds to me like a typical "Everybody uses -name your thing here-, so you should use it. If you don''t, you suck." thing. You should be grateful that there are people who think different every now and then!

not really, "target market" has nothing to do with telling someone what to use, or saying anyone/anything sucks. it has to do with what to write in your book if you want enough people to buy it to make a living.