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@ Cardinal
2025-05-26 14:22:23I was very surprised to see the foreword written by Ken Liu. I have read The Three Body Problem and Death's End, two science fiction books translated by him. Just could not believe the connection.
Chapter 1 covered Finite Fields. This took me back to my Abstract Algebra class in undergrad. I wish I had this book and was interested in Bitcoin back then. So much of what you study in school you have to study without experiencing how they connect to the real world. I wish this wasn't the case.
Jimmy Song does an amazing job of explaining just what you need in simple terms and planting flags to watch out for concepts that will be relevant later in the book. The companion code and exercises are also very well designed. This got me thinking about how much students miss out by not actively incorporating programming into the mathematics curriculum.
Looking forward to continuing with the book.