LimpWristed

You're over-exaggerating :) From the wiki link, the very first definition works just fine. In fact, I don't see anything about unions, disjointedness in there. Certainly, no group theory. You don't need to know how to construct, count(cardinality) or know the properties of integers(number/group theory) to know what they are for the purposes of programming. No, there's no cabal making everything more difficult than it needs to be ;D I think wiki always gets unfairly maligned for this sort of thing.

> more conservative and trusting of the government

Don't American conservatives tend to distrust gov in general? Or is it more like nonprofessional + conservative = distrusting of gov?

I think that's partially because people generally tend to become more conservative as they age. Older generations, then, act as if sex, rebellion, and curiosity never existed.

> If you are a "skilled" person of foreign nationality would you rather go to the US or China if you would have an option ?

Do you know if China is evolving culturally? The reason I wouldn't want to live in a place like China or Russia is that people there are not socially developed. By that I mean, people there are not pleasant and rudeness is the norm. Hopefully, China will be different in a decade or so.

Wikipedia has the same definitions that are in your textbook, but often provides much more readable proofs as compared to the very short and "elegant" ones or unwieldy monstrosities in your usual textbooks. At least that's true for textbooks at the level of, say, Dummit&Foot's Abstract Algebra or Baby Rudin.

> Most of the Wikipedia articles on technical subjects, and especially on mathematical topics, are terrible as introductory exposition.

Yet they are trivial(and often more helpful) as compared to the arcane material in a math text.

Are you comfortable with proving math statements? If not, How to Think About Analysis by Lara Alcock is an amazing intro to Analysis. http://www.amazon.com/Think-About-Analysis-Lara-Alcock/dp/01...

I am a cashier. Never use math. I doubt anyone outside academia and parts of industry ever uses math in its proper sense.

> Everyone concedes that these are fundamental, but they have been scandalously neglected, perhaps in the naive belief that anyone learning calculus has outgrown them. In fact, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry can never be outgrown, and the most rewarding path to higher mathematics sustains their development alongside the 'advanced' branches such as calculus.

I doubt one's "outgrowth of certain branches of math" is the reason math as taught to non-math majors is a castrated mess it is. It's probably the market forces that reject real analysis, abstract algebra or anything at that level or higher. It's the same reason "some programming language du jour > fundamentals of CS, IRL".

I am new to all this. I was thinking to get started with The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan/Schocken. Is Project Oberon something entirely different? If not, how do they compare?