Graphics and Compute: Volume 5 Ray-Tracing (Hardback)

A worthwhile addition to my shelf, with realistic expectations.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. Worth picking up if you already have the basics. Set realistic expectations and you will get a lot out of it.

This is the one to get if you are serious about javascript.

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 early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. 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.

Good value. Not perfect, but I would buy another book from this author.

This is the third book I have read on javascript this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.