[tmotwu]

I took this course a while back. Before every exam, students would create a massive crowdsourced google doc and attempt many problems in the book / fodder. Granted, we had TAs to review our results - but even they don't access to a solutions manual. But the docs were filled with comments, many different approaches and alternative viewpoints. The class discussion board was very active. I've never seen that sort of large scale student-led collaborative atmosphere in any other class.

In that sense, I agree that this book isn't designed for self study. Every homework was done in groups of 3 and probably took a combined 30-60 manhours a week to complete. It would be pretty hard I'd imagine.

The reality is - if you're a developer and someone asks you to develop a program that does x, you rarely have the privilege of having a complete source code waiting in the end to compare against. But you build it iteratively. You do a bit of research. Sometimes you ask for feedback through a pull request. You think about every corner case and edge case. These are all basic practical skills you don't get to exercise if your mindset is to just grind through math problems.

These days, the internet is full of knowledge, social and connected as it can possibly be. StackOverflow and research papers are one google search away. (I say this because every problem in the book are usually based on very interesting theoretical CS papers) Discord servers have become huge chat rooms for people to organize like-minded individuals. Assembling a group of motivated individuals online and working on problems together is a very effective way to learn than trying to dive into material by yourself. Whether it be this book or any other textbook. I don't think this book should be faulted for trying to incentivize that philosophy.