So I finally finished my third book of the year; Hardcore Programming for Mechanical Engineers. I should probably pick easier books if a plan to significantly increase the number of books I read this year!

The purpose of the this book seems to be take a mechanical engineer and teach them how to solve engineering problems from scratch. It serves as quite a reasonable refresher on python and the software engineering side of things.

If I was a Mechanical Engineer it would probably feel a little self indulgent going from first principle and not relying on various packages. I like that idea and so rate this book fairly highly just for attempting it.

I found the explainations to be clear, if, sometimes, a little verbose. As you would expect it has maths, quite a bit of maths. Not all the code involves maths, you write code to read config files, output SVG files and mess with Tkinter. But if you don't like math then this is NOT the book for you.

What level of math do you need. Well I am I think it as all covered by the time I got a few months into the physics degree I took. I don't recall hitting solving linear system earlier than that. Well I did write a Gaussian elimation program before that but that's a different story.

I have however realised that Maths is taught differently now, at least in the uk, so things I hit at 14/15 are not hit by students until they are 18. In return they get to study stuff I never touched. Life is full of those trade offs and this is not a rant about changes in education.

I picked the book up in a Humble Bundle and it took quite a few evening to work through, so in terms of price it was money well spent.

The flow of the book is you are going to develop enough code to solve the forces on trusses. Along the way developing a few other applications.

I guess I would give this book 4 out 5 if this was an Amazon review. I don't really see it as Hardcore programming though but each to their own.