Rating: 
Summary: Great for quick reference
Review: C++ is a beast of a language and can quickly get away from you if you let it. This book will help you get through those frustrating moments.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the reviewer from Sweden
Review: Having been in software development for many years, the last twelve using C++, I can say from experience that the author has assembled an accurate collection of problems I encounter over and over again. I have worked with legacy source code from Microsoft, Adobe Systems and other lesser known software companies that have some of the problems described in this book. These instances are not an indication of incompetence on the part of the original programmers, but rather a reflection of the realities of the business: deadlines need to be met and rarely do we have the time fiddle with code to make it into picture perfect C++. And if it works properly as it is, then don't fix something that is not broken.Beginning C++ programmers will get a lot out of this book. This is especially true if you are migrating from C and need to break a few bad habits. Experienced C++ developers will not get that much out of it, but the author has many interesting points that are worth checking out. The reviewer from Sweden is either an academic pinhead who has never participated in a large commercial software development effort that someone would actually want to pay money for, or he / she / it stopped reading the book after the first three or four sections. To sum this book up: If you DON'T need to ask yourself the questions the author addresses in this book, then you are not doing any serious C++ software development!
Rating: 
Summary: If you need this book you're in trouble!
Review: I read an extatic review of this book and bought a copy. Luckily I didn't have to pay for it, my company did. If anyone in my design organization would use some of his suggested solutions I would firmly grab that person by the neck and drag him to a place where he could straighten out paper clips instead of making code unreadable. To sum this book up: If you need to ask yourself the question he addresses in this book, re-write your code! Get a copy of Meyers Effective C++ books instead!
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Meyers
Review: I'm sure most of you have heard about, skimmed through, or read Scott Meyers 50 or 35 tips on C++ and if you thought those were good books then I'm sure you'll find that this book is a lot better. The book is organized in a similar format and basically you get 99 good tips in one book rather than 50 or 35 from the other books, so it's a lot of value for the money you spend. This book doesn't seem to get much hype compared to the other C++ books I've read due to there being only 6 reviews for this on Amazon, but I felt that it was one of the better ones I've read for quite some time. The coding and examples didn't insult your intelligence by repeating the same snippet of pre-algebra code that I often see in many books. This book may not catch your eye when you first look at it at the bookstore, it didn't mine at first. I saw this on the shelf for nearly a year and I never bothered to pick it up because every time I thumbed through it I never got a true glimpse of what it was. Then I decided one day to buy it because of the Addison Wesley name and it turned out to be a gem. Better than Meyers and Sutters as well and those are excellent series as well. I'm sure if you liked those then you'll like this one too.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Meyers
Review: I'm sure most of you have heard about, skimmed through, or read Scott Meyers 50 or 35 tips on C++ and if you thought those were good books then I'm sure you'll find that this book is a lot better. The book is organized in a similar format and basically you get 99 good tips in one book rather than 50 or 35 from the other books, so it's a lot of value for the money you spend. This book doesn't seem to get much hype compared to the other C++ books I've read due to there being only 6 reviews for this on Amazon, but I felt that it was one of the better ones I've read for quite some time. The coding and examples didn't insult your intelligence by repeating the same snippet of pre-algebra code that I often see in many books. This book may not catch your eye when you first look at it at the bookstore, it didn't mine at first. I saw this on the shelf for nearly a year and I never bothered to pick it up because every time I thumbed through it I never got a true glimpse of what it was. Then I decided one day to buy it because of the Addison Wesley name and it turned out to be a gem. Better than Meyers and Sutters as well and those are excellent series as well. I'm sure if you liked those then you'll like this one too.
Rating:
Summary: Save yourself some C++ pain
Review: If you can learn from other peoples mistakes then this book will save you a lot of pain. C++ is one of those languages that can dish out the pain if you don't understand what it's doing (and not doing) for you. The book presents 99 gotchas, starting with procedural issues (e.g. useless comments, etc.), but quickly gets into C++ technical issues. An example is gotcha #70, where you didn't define a virtual destructor in the base class. It's something that the old dogs know to do, but if you didn't know it then you can get stung badly and it will take you a lot of frustration to figure out. If you liked Effective C++ and More Effective C++ you will probably like this book. Either way, if you are a professional C++ programmer this book can save you a lot of pain.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but not great
Review: Overall, it's a good book worth reading, but it's not as great as Scott Meyers' two Effective C++ volumes. There are topics that this book merely or partially rehash Meyers', but the explanations, IMHO, are not as good. Nevertheless, it's a newer book with elaboration on design patterns and their applications.
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Summary: Preventing Ineffective C++
Review: Preventing Ineffective C++ In the spirit of Scott Meyers' Effective C++ books, Stephen Dewhurst has compiled an excellent reference with ninety-nine common evils perpetrated by beginning and experienced C++ programmers. The author covers everything from the basic "Gotchas," like #2 "Magic Numbers", to hierarchy design "Gotchas," like #98 "Asking Personal Questions of an Object." This book is a valuable starting point for any C++ software developer doing a code review of his or her own work. I found myself going back to my own code and questioning why I implemented some things the way I did against the way Dewhurst recommends. A few things I changed and a few I left alone. It's always good to have a book like this around to remind one of the "proper" ways to write C++ code. With that said, I would like to take this opportunity to give Mr. Dewhurst a little friendly abuse. :-) In Gotcha #7, "Ignorance of Basic Language Subtleties," he pontificates on the "esoteric semantics of the lowly switch statement." He reproduces a hideous code snippet from a C++ compiler containing nested while loops overlapping cases in a switch statement that was "used to implement efficient internal iteration of a complex data structure." This is where I disagree with the author: just because something is *allowed* by the semantics of a language, it does not necessarily follow that it should be *done* with the language. I wouldn't want to unleash code like that on an *experienced* code maintainer-let alone a novice, as mentioned in the book. This falls under my 'stupid code tricks' category. Remembering that our C++ code gets boiled down to atomic machine instructions by the compiler anyway, esoteric semantics like the example in the book may or may not end up being more efficient than a more human-maintainable implementation. Ultimately, the author seems to violate his own Gotcha #11 "Unnecessary Cleverness." Nitpicking aside, this book presents a useful checklist that every C++ programmer should review; a five-star rating for the C++ beginner and good solid four-star rating for the experienced developer. Thank you, Mr. Dewhurst, for preventing this software engineer from being "hopelessly démodé."
Rating:
Summary: Really not bad.
Review: There are dozens books about C++ on the market and this one is clearly under the top ten. It's a wonderful book for beginners and programmers at an intermediate level. For the pros it's fun to read it, because: I made all this mistakes a few years ago. The perhaps only flaw ( I found in the whole book only one real mistake, or my compiler (gcc) is wrong , and I know it's not) of this book: it's too short. If you are making your first steps in C++, then buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat Uninspiring
Review: There's little in the problems identified by this book or in the solutions suggested that I would disagree with. However, I didn't really learn anything new and surprising from it either. This book may have its place as a beginner's supplement to Meyer's _Effective C++_ books and Sutter's _Exceptional C++_ books. I wouldn't recommend it for advanced C++ programmers, though.
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