[maclaren]

I'm not convinced it's a shame. As a freshmen, with only a small amount of previous programming experience, I didn't appreciate the beauty of abstraction or the elegance of the ideas presented.

A few years later, though, and I understand why it's a revered text. While there is something to be said for learning the fundamentals of computer science before bad habits are formed, it seems that the real messages are often lost in the hands of first-time CS students (which is probably over half the Berkeley freshmen EECS class).

That said, I haven't been through the alternative and I can't vouch for it.