Reader reviews

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 diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. One of those books that pays for itself within the first few chapters. Highly recommended.

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

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. A couple of chapters felt like they could have been merged, but that is a minor complaint. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with game design.

An enjoyable and informative read, though it could have been shorter.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. A good addition to a technical library, as long as you know what you are buying.

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

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The chapters on ai & machine learning are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with ai & machine learning.

Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

This is the third book I have read on javascript this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Worth picking up if you already have the basics. Set realistic expectations and you will get a lot out of it.

Almost excellent. A second edition could easily push it to five stars.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The book rewards careful reading. Skimming it would be a mistake. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.