It's impossible to overstate how incredible this book is. A bit about me and why this book has been so perfect for me:
I have a mathematics background up to University Sophomore Level Calculus. I have 3.5 years behind me as a full-time web developer working from home, and a lifetime as a computer hobbyist. I'm 40 years old. I have been curious for some time now about the prospects of someday working my way into the more advanced fields of code writing - including computer simulations with real-world physics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and gaming. I drove big rigs for 15 years and started to fiddle a bit with the idea of building a trucking simulator as a learning tool. After making some quick educated guesses about the mathematics behind the movement of the vehicle and having surprisingly good luck with the basic animations (straight DOM and javascript stuff - no canvas or flash), I decided I wanted to dive in completely to learn the animation and mathematics behind real-world simulations and see how far I could take it.
Foundation HTML5 Animation with JavaScript
seemed the best option, and wow did I strike gold! I had no experience with the canvas element, and no experience with computer animations or applying mathematics to computer simulations. I decided Javascript was my preferred language for this foray. Within the first 30% of this book, you're going to be shocked at what you can do. You'll be able to create graphics that react to real-world forces like gravity, friction, and acceleration. You'll be able to calculate linear and angular velocities, distance between points, and add/remove/modify entire forces of nature with fewer than 5 lines of code more times than not. You'll be able to draw and fill all manner of shapes, textures, and colors including gradients and various opacities. And a ton more - and you're only 30% of the way through! It just gets better and better and better.
The author (Billy Lamberta) has the most pleasant teaching style imaginable. Not once did I think a new concept was taught out of order. Not once did I feel that a lesson wasn't covered well enough for implementing it in the succeeding lessons. The book is so well written that to me it almost felt like floating down a quiet stream in the summertime - you barely notice the movement, but suddenly you look up and you're 10 miles downstream building all manner of real-world physics models and animations.
My favorite thing about this book is that the author teaches the underlying mathematics and drawing principles in such a way that they'll apply to any drawing platform out there. He specifically uses the canvas API for this book, but once you know how to do the mathematics, you can apply it to any platform. Another thing I loved was that Billy always shows you the easy way and the more advanced way of doing something when there's different ways of implementing it. For instance, you can do the more advanced (and processor-intensive) calculations to determine the real-world forces of friction, or you can simply multiply the current velocity by say .9 and it has the exact same effect. Your choice. If you have the processing power and need the simulation to be true-to-life, you know how. If you're looking for a more frugal use of resources and it needs to simply appear life-like, you also know how.
The fact that he teaches the fundamentals of the underlying mathematics and drawing principles means that the information will never become out of date by a platform change or underlying technology change.
Who this book is for: If you're looking to get into the gaming arena, real-world physics simulators, virtual reality, augmented reality, graphic design, or related technologies and you want a solid understanding of the underlying mathematics and drawing principles which can then be applied to any platform, this is the book for you. You need a pretty solid (intermediate) background in Javascript - enough to understand the basic principles of functions, methods, objects, looping, and array manipulation. And although the math isn't super intensive, it's enough that you had better love math. A solid background in Trigonometry and/or Calculus will help tremendously, but you can learn to apply the mathematics if you're determined enough. If you don't learn the underlying concepts, you'll never be able to apply them to your own simulations and graphics. I know my background in Mathematics and Javascript has helped me learn this stuff far more quickly than I would have otherwise, and it has definitely helped me use these principles in a creative context.
Who should avoid this book: People looking for the "quick and easy" method of building simple animations or games. If you love to use software that does the job for you and boasts features like "Learn to build games without having to write code" - this book is absolutely not for you - run away - run far, far away. I personally love to learn things from the bottom up. I want the nitty-gritty details and deep understanding of the underlying concepts so that I can apply them to my own unique projects. Memorizing a few formulas or using "quick and dirty" software will never allow you to truly build the amazing, unique graphics or physics simulations that you are imagining. The more unique and challenging your projects, the deeper your understanding needs to be of the fundamentals. The mathematics and drawing principles covered in this book surely will allow you to be as creative as you're capable of being, without pigeon-holing you into a certain platform or method of doing things.
Truly fantastic!
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Philip Harwood
The best programming related book I have ever read
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