I've got kind of a love-hate relationship with Programming Collective Intelligence. In many ways it's an awesome book. It covers a lot of territory with relat

I've got kind of a love-hate relationship with Programming Collective Intelligence. In many ways it's an awesome book. It covers a lot of territory with relative grace and in clear language. On the other hand, it's often simplified to the point that the versions of things covered in there aren't really suitable for more than toy applications. My fear is that it brings the low end of some of these fields in reach of folks who aren't used to working with the sort of material that they'll need to get up to the next notch -- which is really where the practical applications begin. I suspect that could be frustrating for some.