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Review title: Dense and frustrating, by design
Product review: The book is well-written and accurate, but it follows the instruction-by-example philosophy: to accomplish this task, open such-and-such an example file, then (1) select this tool, (2) click yonder icon, (3) run that menu command, and so forth. It carefully avoids explaining the concepts behind the operations, leaving the poor reader to deduce them (or, too often, guess at them). This approach makes everything five times harder to absorb than it ought to be.I found that I could often learn most effectively by glancing over a lesson to grasp its overall object, then figuring out the procedure on my own. It's pretty sad when an instructional book impedes the learning process to this extent instead of enabling it.
