UserScripts in 20 Minutes (Coffee Book Series)

Almost excellent. A second edition could easily push it to five stars.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. The book rewards careful reading. Skimming it would be a mistake. 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.

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. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

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

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The chapters on javascript are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. One of those books that pays for itself within the first few chapters. Highly recommended.