Shaders Unchained: Writing Powerful Shaders for Every Platform

Useful in parts. Fine as a reference, less so as a cover-to-cover read.

This is the third book I have read on computer graphics this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Borrow it first if you can, or at least check the table of contents carefully before buying.

Excellent from start to finish. No filler, no padding.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. 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. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

A genuinely enjoyable read that also taught me a great deal.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. One of those books that pays for itself within the first few chapters. Highly recommended.