Rating: 
Summary: Not very well written
Review: This book would be great for a class room, but does not work so good if you are trying to learn on your own unless you have a good reference book. When ever the author brings up new OOP logic, or teaches new C++ library functions he does a poor job explaining them, instead he tells you in what page he will go over the topic in more detail, that makes the book a little hard to read since he tends to do that 2-3 times per page.I would recommend this book only for programmers with previous C/C++ experience, or advanced programers with some prior OOP experience.
Rating:
Summary: NOT for a beginner in C++
Review: Contrary to the marketing hype and endorsements on the book, this book in NOT for a beginner in C++. Even an experienced programmer in other languages, like myself, will find it difficult to learn from this book. The main reason is that the book is replete with errata. In the website of the authors, the authors themselves list the following: 1) 54 items of known errata found in the first printing of the book. 2) 39 items of known errata in the second printing. 3) 2 items of discovered errata in the third printing. These errata items are much too confusing for someone, even an experienced programmer in other languages, to figure out, when he/she is trying to understand C++ in the first place! And correcting one's own copy with these errata items is very tedious. The type of people who are bound to benefit from this book, or to praise its merits, are those who have PREVIOUS knowledge or training in C++.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the beginner
Review: "Accelerated C++" has gained much deserved praise since it was first released, as noted by the reviews here on Amazon. And I agree for the most part, this is a great book for learning C++. But this book is not suited for someone who's never programmed anything before, as it's quite difficult for an introductory book. "Accelerated C++" seems meant to be an introduction to the language, not programming. In that this book is ideal for someone who already knows another language and wants to learn C++ quickly. When starting this book, I had a fairly decent background in C, as well as javascript and Basic. But I still found this book challenging. I reread chapters several times, did a lot of experimenting on my own, and looked up things I wasn't sure about in other books and websites. If this was my very first book on programming I would have not gotten very far at all. The reward was a rather rich knowledge of C++ with the ability to move onto more advanced topics with confidence. If you're brand new to programming, look elsewhere. This book will only frustrate you. But if you've got a bit of experience under your belt and want to dive into C++ and the standard library quickly, this is a great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book with an imperfect premise
Review: The authors are smart and accomplished, and the book is excellent. However, as one who has espoused their premise that programming instruction is best taught at a higher level in my twenty years of programming instruction in a middle school, I would advise caution. Try teaching Visual C++ as a first programming class to talented eighth graders sometime as a test of the authors' premise. Everything works great until a typo evokes absolutely undecipherable error messages. All the supporting files and structures beneath VC++ fall like dominoes and the neoprogrammer is frustrated, if not terrified. Not to mention the instructor. Admittedly, the authors recommend a lower level appoach than VC++. If it takes high level instruction to get student's attention and to demonstrate what can be accomplished with a language, that's fine, but a multi-level approach, preferably hypermedia-based is necessary in lieu of a personal tutor. Unless a student understands the underpinnings of the processes and concepts that s/he is working with, a loss of faith and confidence ensues. To be fair, the audience of this book is generally grownup and motivated by a practical need to hit the ground running. But the need to delve deeper, and the time and effort required to do so, will bore, if not frustrate, most of these people as well. I'm lucky in that my students just like to play, and they have time on their hands. So I have the luxury of having them write programs that explore bits, bytes, memory, variables and types while they learn the fundamentals. They don't realize what a drag it is.
Rating:
Summary: First rate text from authoritative source
Review: It comes as no surprise that the text book co-authored by Andrew Koenig, a leading authority on C++, is one of the best. This book teaches C++ "in the right order" -- it follows the basic philosophy that new programmers should be "re-use consumers" before they become "re-use producers". In other words, it has new programmers leveraging the standard library to great effect from the beginning, rather than having them struggle to design classes. The result is a book that is full of C++ code examples that really look like modern C++ (making use of the STL, namespaces, and exceptions) from the beginning. (for example, string is introduced I think in chapter 1. The coverage of the STL is just right -- they focus on the more important classes (map,list,vector), and leave the rest for a more complete reference (see Josuttis: the standard C++ library, a tutorial and a reference) When the book finally does discuss class design (about half way through), it is done right, and the class designs are better thought out than those in many other text books (and indeed, reflect the fact that the authors are familiar with designing high quality class libraries, such as those in the C++ language) Not only do the authors emphasise good practice (keeping mindful of class invariants), when they give examples of custom classes, they do it right, with absolutely no conceptual bloopers, something which is extremely rare in C++ texts (this is the first book I've seen that doesn't make big bloopers when computing random integers for example) While polymorphism is left until quite late in the book, it's covered quite nicely, and there's a chapter on the handle/body idiom and reference counts. Overall, this is a very strong beginners text, and is highly recommended. The quality of the example code is unusually high, and the early emphasis on the standard library is a welcome change from more traditional books. The only thing that this book is lacking is examples. It seems a little terse. This is not necessarily a problem, but it means the beginner will need to supllement the book with further examples (another book, or a professors lecture notes) Not a big problem given the modest pricetag. On the other hand, experienced C programmers wanting to learn C++ will love this title because it skips over the stuff they "already know" and goes straight into "real" C++.
Rating:
Summary: A book not to be missed!
Review: I love this book. I read it after taking a class in C++ as a form of review for a class in Visual C++. It presents the essentials of C++ in a way that is so clear. I am grateful for it.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book to practice c++ programming
Review: This book taught me a lot about programming in c++. But I think I wouldn't have learned so much if I were starting with this book from scratch. I recommend to read "Thinking in c++" by Eckel first and take a quickly read of "The c++ standard library" by Josuttis or other that teach you some about rhe standard library. It is hard to learn by example without knowing anything of the language, but is very good to practice with examples when you already know something about the syntax of the language and the standard library. C++ is the first programming language I study (I studied c first, but only to start then with c++) and with this book I'm finally capable to do interesting programs. If you are very smart or an experienced programmer in other languages, you can start c++ with this book from scratch, otherwise, follow my advice and read Eckel and Josuttis (or others, but those are very good) first.
Rating:
Summary: strings, vectors, lists, maps--finally!!
Review: Ever since I started using Rogue Wave's Tools.h++ six years ago I have always wondered when Rogue Wave's style--which I find powerful in its simplicity--would enter into the C++ mainstream. Finally Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo have produced a C++ book that I find so refreshing and encouraging in its unabashed use of string, vector, list, map objects the way I am used to doing using Tools.h++. Some people do not want to learn a separate library such as Tools.h++, and some projects at work do not allow the use of Tools.h++, so I'm glad that modern (i.e., 1998 standard) C++ allows designing in the general style of Tools.h++. It's high time that we use C++ not just as a better C but as a real OOP language in its own right! .... I love the new/1998 standard C++ design/programming style!!!
Rating:
Summary: The best "learning C++" book yet.
Review: I picked up a copy of "Accelerated C++" to see what the fuss was about, and I'll add my voice to those who have praised this book. It is the first book I've seen to introduce C++ coding in a high-level manner along with some notion of invariants, and reminded me in some ways of the text which taught me Modula-2 a decade ago (Sale's "Modula-2: Disciple and Design", as if it matters). I think/hope that this book will help to improve the average quality of [C++] programming. If you've been put off learning C++ because you think that it's just a low-level language, this book might be your reason to try again: it shows how to use C++ in a high-level style, and more importantly it reminds us how to _think_ in a high-level style and translate that directly to code. -- James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org>
Rating:
Summary: Learning by Example
Review: This book is perfect for those who have experience in a BASIC language and want to learn C++. When I first tried to learn C++ about 10 years ago, the books on the subject and the programs were very complex, very low level ideas. But as the language of C++ has matured, things have changed. The standard-library abstractions have made many tasks easy for the programmer, and Andrew and Barbara are right on top of this. Indeed, when the author is the Project Editor of the C++ standards committee, you can have confidence you are learning industry standards that will help you land that C++ job, or create that killer application in the quickest way possible. The book Accelerated C++, and the questions the authors have been able to answer via e-mail, make this book, in my mind, an incredible learning tool for C++.
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