On Monday, 13 January 2020 at 11:58:51 UTC, mark wrote:
Both those books are published by Packt who normally have no quality control at all as I've discovered to my cost. However
It's hit and miss in my experience. I've picked up some utter crap from them, but I've also found some real gems. There's no real vetting of the authors they sign, so the writing quality and knowledge level vary. Assuming those are up to snuff, much depends on feedback from the technical reviewers and the author's ability to evaluate the editor's revisions.
Packt's editors follow a rote process where certain words and phrases are *always* replaced from a set of alternatives and certain phrases are *always* inserted in certain circumstances (e.g., to introduce a code snippet) without any regard for the surrounding context. Fortunately, they give the author a chance to review the edits before publication. In my case, they were willing to accept my revision of the revisions (the ones I caught, anyway). Sadly, I never had a chance to do the same with the two chapters they published online.
I can attest that Adam's and Kai's books are worth the buy. I own and have enjoyed both. If either of them were to do a 2nd edition, I'd pick it up!
