Joshua B. Smith

This is easily one of the worst technical books I have ever read. Its organization is choppy, nonlinear, and nonsensical. It contains errors that look like they may be mistakes in thinking and knowledge rather than typos. It refers to things out of order.

Maybe there was a decent draft in its past, but if so it must have been hacked up into pieces and rearranged before getting reassembled with cellophane tape in preparation for going to the printers. That any competent technical editor had anything to do with this book at all is in serious doubt.

(EDIT: I have inadvertently maligned a good technical editor. Since its publication, the technical editor expressed disappointment that the publisher refused technical editing advice because there was not time in the publication schedule. This explains a lot.)

Read something else.… (mere)