> If Computer Architecture were a really healthy field, classes would have to be taught from recently-published papers, because it was moving faster than a textbook could be published.
I really don't get this perspective. How can you possibly hope to understand "recently-published papers" without first understanding the basics of the field, which is what Hennessy and Patterson covers? Every subject has introductory textbooks from which introductory courses are taught, and then you can take more advanced courses that can, among other things, include material from recently-published papers. Are there even any fields where courses must be taught from recently-published papers?
On another note, it's not like no more computer architecture textbooks are made. Look at the Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture series.
// I really don't get this perspective. How can you possibly hope to understand "recently-published papers" without first understanding the basics of the field, //
A healthy field moves faster than the textbooks can keep up. Consider the field of, say, personal transportation, during the turn of the century. I'm sure they had some very classic textbooks on veterinary medicine for horses and oxen. But they probably didn't have a lot of classic textbooks on being an auto mechanic.
In the 80's and 90's, if you were studying AI in school, they'd be teaching you prolog, first order logic, various parsing techniques, heuristics to search through graphs. Now it is neural nets, transformers, etc.
A healthy field has to "tear up the textbooks" every 10 years or so.
I really don't get this perspective. How can you possibly hope to understand "recently-published papers" without first understanding the basics of the field, which is what Hennessy and Patterson covers? Every subject has introductory textbooks from which introductory courses are taught, and then you can take more advanced courses that can, among other things, include material from recently-published papers. Are there even any fields where courses must be taught from recently-published papers?
On another note, it's not like no more computer architecture textbooks are made. Look at the Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture series.