[ohdannyboy]

While I agree that this book isn't very useful for self learning, I have to defend the model you describe as adversarial. I took CS473 at UIUC (it's CS374 now) so I can tell you firsthand the course is brutal -- easily the hardest course in the CS program. You're given a LOT of resources through office hours and everyone uses them. The TAs are good at leading you down the right path instead of just showing you the answer and making you feel like you connected the dots (you probably didn't). Most of the answers are on Chegg if you want that, although I think Chegg is the worst thing ever for actual learning.

Unfortunately I don't have a good solution for the self learner here... There is no way in hell I would have gotten through that class without the TAs and workgroups. Just being able to peek at the answers would have been terrible.

[zinclozenge]

In the former situation you described, the actual textbook doesn't matter, it's all about the resources you described to help you along.

In a lot of cases, those resources just don't exist, even at universities. That's why worked examples and problems with solutions are so invaluable. In fact, they're so valuable, I've spent half a decade compiling these kind of resources for mathematics and physics, back when I was a master's student. I literally crawled through professor course pages manually downloading pdfs.