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Title: I think I had a worse textbook once, ten years ago
Review: The excessive reliance on ML and poor language skills exhibited are well covered in the other reviews. I'd just like to add that Mitchell has a terrible habit of explaining things out of order (for instance, activation records are explained on page 165, but you are expected to know them on page 148), and his "This is beyond the scope of this book." handwaving makes many of the explanations completely incoherent.I have never sold back a textbook before, but I'm taking this back to the bookstore right after my final, and then I'll get a real Comparative Programming Languages textbook.
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