Non-Human Intelligence (Coffee Book Series)

Well worth picking up if you already have the basics.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

Genuinely excellent — I finished it in a week and immediately started again.

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. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

Three stars feels about right. Useful, but not essential.

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.