Graphics and Compute: Primer Volume 1 (Hardback)

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 progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The chapters on programming are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with programming.

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

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 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. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

Very good, with a few caveats. The core material is strong.

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 code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. 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.