LOVELY BOOKS.SERIOUSLY GOOD FINDS.

Well worth picking up if you already have the basics.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

I have read a lot of books on this subject and this is the clearest.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

Strong content, uneven pacing. I would still recommend it.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. Worth picking up if you already have the basics. Set realistic expectations and you will get a lot out of it.