Reader reviews

Useful in parts. Fine as a reference, less so as a cover-to-cover read.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. 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 had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

Finally, a book that treats javascript with the care it deserves.

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 explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

Disappointing. The description oversold what is actually inside.

This is the third book I have read on graphics this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. Two stars. The subject deserves a better treatment than this.

Worth every page. I have already recommended it to two colleagues.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

I got a lot out of this, even if a few sections felt rushed.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.