101 Fractal Projects (Paperback)

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.

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

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

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

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.