Reader reviews

Well worth picking up if you already have the basics.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. Good value for the price and worth the time it takes to work through properly.

It does the job, though it took some patience to get through.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

Exactly the book I needed. Straight to the point and genuinely useful.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. One of those books that pays for itself within the first few chapters. Highly recommended.

Not quite what I expected from the description, but there is material here.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. Borrow it first if you can, or at least check the table of contents carefully before buying.

Outstanding. I kept finding reasons to come back to it.

I bought this on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a forum thread, and I am glad I did. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. An easy five stars from me. I look forward to whatever the author writes next.

Exactly the book I needed. Straight to the point and genuinely useful.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. I found myself making notes in the margins, which is always a good sign. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.