Rating:  Summary: Jesse is a master Review: Awesome book I must say, Great explanations of all topics even the very beginning topics to using the preprocessor to debug...Great Book. I am very new to C++ and I am only 13, so my reading level is not very advanced, but I found this book to be very informative and very comprehensive.Great tutorial/reference
Rating:  Summary: Great combination of teaching and reference Review: Coming from a primarily VB/VBA background into the world of C++, I needed something that would help be get up to speed on the syntax and concepts of C++. Because I had a programming background, I found myself using this book as more of a spot reference on how to do specific things in C++. However, there were many sorts of items that I was NOT used to using in programming at all that this book did an admirable job of helping me out with. Among those were the chapters on templates and specifically the STL. After moving through that chapter, I am now comfortable with actively using list, vector and queue containers. My wife, on the other hand, has had zero programming experience or training. She has worked more than half way through the book (often covering 2 "days" in a few hours) and now has a decent knowledge of the contents of those chapters. Certainly, no book will ever replace actually DOING stuff over and over... but you can't know what to do until you have seen it in action. This book provides that. The examples they use are simple when possible and complex when necessary. There is a nice format to this book in that there is a review section at the end of each chapter ("day") and then questions allowing you to actually create/debug code - with the answers in the back. Most of the time... if not close to all of the time... she was able to get those answers right on the first attempt. I believe that, between the two of us with our vastly different experience and knowledge levels, we have found a book that covered both of our needs very well. Will it cover everything? No book can. Will it solve every little quirk you could ever have as a programmer? If you expect a book to do that, you shouldn't be a programmer in the first place. Will this book give you many tools - ranging from basic to advanced - with which you can become a serious C++ programmer? I believe it will.
Rating:  Summary: Good General Intro to C++ Review: I agree with previous reviewers about some of the unfortunate characteristics of this book: introducing new C++ functions without prior exposure, some typographical errors (which seem inevitable in any programming book), and the need for more detailed explanations of some concepts. However, for learning what C++ is all about, I not found one better. (I can't believe one reviewer actually said the author doesn't know C++). I found this book very easy to read and understand (though pointers can be a difficult subject to master). If you want to read a difficult book (but fascinating), try Paul Kimmel's Borland C++ 5. I believe the negative reviewers of this book have done a great disservice to an outstanding book: you get out of a book (or life) what you put into it and nothing is perfect. Also, a lot of things a programmer needs to know in the real world of software development like database access, GUI (Graphical User Interface) libraries for Windows like OWL (Borland) and MFC (Microsoft), and developing reusable components are not covered in this book. The latter being the most unfortunate omission and why I didn't give the book 5 stars.
Rating:  Summary: Can't trust a book with hack chapter summaries Review: I have found that if reading the chapter summaries of a book provide you with NO information, then, in general, the writer has not taken care to write a good book. This is a sign of laziness. Sam's Teach Yourself C++ contains chapter summaries at the end of each chapter which are simply the chapter table of contents in sentence form. This is lazy and inexcusable. For instance, if a chapter's content listing said something like this: "Using Variables and Constants - Data types - Variable sizes - Constants" The chapter summary would say, "In this chapter we learned about using variables and constants. We covered data types, variable sizes, and learned about constants." Seriously. It's that bad.
Rating:  Summary: No, silly, cats can't bark Review: Liberty's introduction to C++ is, in a string, "hit and miss." The author objectifies much of what is to be learned through zany humor, which helps to move the wordy chapters along rather well. His simplification of OOP basics, memory allocation, pointers and references are easy enough to understand. I must, however, agree with another reviewer that editing was vastly overlooked by someone though; for there are many mistakes in typeface, spelling, and compiling. Overall, I found this a helpful intro to C++ after my work with Visual Basic and FORTRAN...but there are some kinks to be worked out.
Rating:  Summary: An outstanding book! Review: Those difficult and complex issues are brought down to earth using straight forward language. The descriptions on Pointers, Arrays, Linked Lists, References, Functions, Classes, Encapsulation, Templates, Containers, Inheritance, and Polymorphism, are presented more clearly, accurately, and concisely than any other book that I have ever read. There is a lot of key information packed within those 850 or so pages, and it is helping me to prepare for more advanced topics.
Rating:  Summary: A great book Review: This is the book that taught me C++. And it was easy. The author did a splendid job with this book, easy to follow and it covers the most useful parts of the language. If you want to learn C++ then this is the book. Of course there is a few drawbacks, some of the examples is unnecessary or to long. I know this is a C++ books but a little more C would have been nice.
Rating:  Summary: deleted Review: deleted
Rating:  Summary: A lot of errors, contradictions and misinterpretations Review: Bottom line: DON'T BUY IT. Author definitely didn't even bother to check his writings before giving it out for print. Practically in every chapter there's an annoying mistake (code doesn't compile) or a contradiction to something said a few pages earlier. Altho object-oriented topics covered very well, overall impression is that I was more often frustrated and lost than enlightened (I was going thru the book with C++ compiler always handy)
Rating:  Summary: Good Introduction Review: By no means is this book an unbelievable introduction to C++, but it will teach you the basics so that you can begin programming within a matter of days. There is nothing in my mind which sticks out as missing from this book. After completing Teach Youself C++ in 21 Days, you should move on to Stroustrup or a more avanced text.
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