Ravi Vakil wrote:This book is intended to give a serious and reasonably complete introduction to algebraic geometry, not just for (future) experts in the field. The exposition serves a narrow set of goals (see §0.4), and necessarily takes a particular point of view on the subject. 

Ravi Vakil wrote:0.0.1. The importance of exercises. This book has a lot of exercises. I have found that unless I have some problems I can think through, ideas don’t get fixed in my mind. Some exercises are trivial — some experts find this offensive, but I find this desirable. A very few necessary ones may be hard, but the reader should have been given the background to deal with them — they are not just an excuse to push hard material out of the text. The exercises are interspersed with the exposition, not left to the end. Most have been extensively field-tested. The point of view here is one I explored with Kedlaya and Poonen in [KPV], a book that was ostensibly about problems, but secretly a case for how one should learn and do and think about mathematics. Most people learn by doing, rather than just passively reading. Judiciously chosen problems can be the best way of guiding the learner toward enlightenment.