Optics By Example

Disclaimer: Chris is a friend of mine.

This is an accessible book that introduces people to optics. It starts slowly and builds up to all sorts of insane pieces of technology which are frankly unbelievably powerful. It's rather inspiring what can be done by optics, though I'm not convinced I could write or read an expression using them on my first try. I learned a lot going through this book, and might reach more for optics the next time I do a big data transformation (though I fear it might be write-only code!)

While I liked this book, a good deal of the prose felt too informal; a good deal of the type errors and signatures are described as “scary,” and the examples reach too often for TV pop culture references that didn't seem relevant. All in all these are minor complaints, and the information content is more than enough to make up for it.