I just would like to draw your attention to what Luc Illusie, illustrious student of Grothendieck, said to Spencer Bloch in a conversation recently published in the Notices of the AMSlink text:
Bloch: You can’t tell a student now to go to EGA and learn algebraic geometry...
Illusie: Actually, students want to read EGA. They understand that for specific questions they have to go to this place, the only place where they can find a satisfactory answer. You have to give them the key to enter there, explain to them the basic language. And then they usually prefer EGA to other expository books. Of course, EGA or SGA are more like dictionaries than books you could read from A to Z.
Bloch: One thing that always drove me crazy about EGA was the excessive back referencing. I mean there would be a sentence and then a seven-digit number...
Illusie: No... You’re exaggerating.
Bloch: You never knew whether behind the veiled curtain was something very interesting that you should search back in a different volume to find; or whether in fact it was just referring to something that was completely obvious and you didn’t need to...
Illusie: That was one principle of Grothendieck: every assertion should be justified, either by a reference or by a proof. Even a “trivial” one. He hated such phrases as “It’s easy to see,” “It’s easily checked.” When he was writing EGA, you see, he was in unknown territory. Though he had a clear general picture, it was easy to go astray. That’s partly why he wanted a justification for everything. He also wanted Dieudonné to be able to understand!
