Reader reviews

Mixed feelings. The good parts are genuinely good; the rest is forgettable.

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. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.

Excellent from start to finish. No filler, no padding.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

Some sections were excellent and others felt like filler.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The chapters on javascript are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

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

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with kinematics.

Good book. The writing is direct and the author is honest about limits.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

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 author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. A good addition to a technical library, as long as you know what you are buying.