Comment by djtango

To be honest I'd recommend just taking a look. It's been 10 years since I first encountered the book (and programming) and I'm sure the lessons can be found elsewhere.

But I find the book a marvel of pedagogy and rank it as maybe one of the greatest textbooks of all time across disciplines. The lessons are packed so densely yet so concisely that you'll appreciate different things on successive reads.

If you're experienced it will also read very easily and quickly so it then becomes quite an easy and enjoyable skim and then you don't have to rely on other people's accounts of whether it is or isn't worth your time.