Just for the sake of reference:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel...

Along these same lines, Microsoft.IO.RecyclableMemoryStream is also useful.

https://github.com/Microsoft/Microsoft.IO.RecyclableMemorySt...

These books assume some degree of Linear Algebra, ESL is definitely not for a entry level.

I would like to add www.codingthe matrix.com for any developers, which has a MOOC as well (Coursera), as a complement to Strang.

Looks more like post-MBP