I always pirated PDFs of my textbooks, but in the few cases where I couldn’t find anything online (typically when the book is niche and very new), I would always wait until I knew that I actually needed the book, because it was frustrating how often this meme came true.
I had this one professor I was really grateful for though. He was a big open-source guy, apparently used to contribute to freebsd and postgres, and he went out of his way to find open-source textbooks for all of his classes.
I had this one professor I was really grateful for though. He was a big open-source guy
I had the bizzaro version of this guy in college once. He sold his own 150$ “textbook” that you had to purchase from a copy shop next to campus. It was just a bunch of sections of other text books that were clearly copied and put together in a tabbed paper folder by the little printing shop.
Was also the same guy that wouldn’t accept assignments unless you turned them in a specific blue folder, which you could conveniently buy from the same copy shop for 5$ a piece.
Still kinda pissed about it like 15 years later, but at least now I can kinda appreciate the hustle that dude had going.
One year I was unable to find a textbook to pirate online so I bought a used copy, set up a camera on a tripod, photographed every page and returned it the next day.
Sounds like too much work but the book was worth more than my time to do it.
When I was doing my undergrad, there was this sketchy shop in a nearby alley where they photocopy textbooks and sold them for just a bit more than the cost of the paper and binding. If they didn’t have it, you could borrow it from the library to lend them and they’ll give you a free copy in exchange.
I always pirated PDFs of my textbooks, but in the few cases where I couldn’t find anything online (typically when the book is niche and very new), I would always wait until I knew that I actually needed the book, because it was frustrating how often this meme came true.
I had this one professor I was really grateful for though. He was a big open-source guy, apparently used to contribute to freebsd and postgres, and he went out of his way to find open-source textbooks for all of his classes.
I had the bizzaro version of this guy in college once. He sold his own 150$ “textbook” that you had to purchase from a copy shop next to campus. It was just a bunch of sections of other text books that were clearly copied and put together in a tabbed paper folder by the little printing shop.
Was also the same guy that wouldn’t accept assignments unless you turned them in a specific blue folder, which you could conveniently buy from the same copy shop for 5$ a piece.
Still kinda pissed about it like 15 years later, but at least now I can kinda appreciate the hustle that dude had going.
One of my CS professors was a top contributor to Wikipedia articles on graph algorithms and just told us to read those in lieu of a textbook
One year I was unable to find a textbook to pirate online so I bought a used copy, set up a camera on a tripod, photographed every page and returned it the next day.
Sounds like too much work but the book was worth more than my time to do it.
When I was doing my undergrad, there was this sketchy shop in a nearby alley where they photocopy textbooks and sold them for just a bit more than the cost of the paper and binding. If they didn’t have it, you could borrow it from the library to lend them and they’ll give you a free copy in exchange.