While I agree this is definitely a thing, it would be a mistake to swing too far in the other direction and view any texts sharing a subject as roughly equivale

While I agree this is definitely a thing, it would be a mistake to swing too far in the other direction and view any texts sharing a subject as roughly equivalent. I've experienced the '3rd text' phenomenon, but I could also point to specific features affecting the wide variance in math text effectiveness. And this book is a pretty good example of exactly that: it has specific unique features allowing it to fulfill its promise of being an effective 'translation' guide for a programmers to a bunch of otherwise typically implicit ideas relating to methods or foundational concepts in mathematics that can be extremely difficult stumbling blocks for the self-taught. IMO a good strategy: take people's glowing praise about particular texts with a grain of salt—but, if specific beneficial features can be pointed out, which would be advantageous to you as a learner, know that can mean striking gold sometimes (in terms of not wasting time).