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> Mine didn't look very good after I'd worked through it.

Counter-anecdote: other than maybe the odd banged corner, mine are pretty much pristine.

> Good shelf life, but 24 years of use? Not a chance.

Did I miss something in the article? Why would anyone expect them to last for 24 years of continuous usage?

GP started with the premise "we don't need one printed in the 21st century".

A more generous reading of that argument might be "we don't need one authored in the 21st century", not that textbooks would never need reprinting and last forever through two dozen owners

D'oh! Thanks. I had indeed interpreted the person they were replying to as talking about authorship rather than printing …despite them saying “printed”

I'd have a problem believing that too, because I see that my oldest child's math textbook (for the last year before starting university) is better than my own was. Not very much, but enough to give me the impression that the textbook authors are paying attention to how their work is used and improving it (maybe by <0.1%) in each edition.

No, one comment up. "No need for a calculus textbook printed after y2k" or words like that. I guess that's 23 years of use if you're pedantic enough, not 24.

A textbook that's gone through five students will have encountered someone like you and also someone like me.

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