Rating: 
Summary: This book is da bomb
Review: I have 5+ ATL books on my shelf, including the MSPress one, but I always reach for this book first when I have ATL questions. Hopefully there will be a refresh soon to add CE/PocketPC and ATL Server topics.
Rating: 
Summary: A dispensable reference
Review: I agree with the other reviewer -- I only wish I had listened and not bought the book. This is a guide. I recommend looking for something better for a person who isn't looking for printed MSDN text.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book on ATL internals
Review: I felt big relief reading this book (Prior to this, I read "Inside ATL" from MS press which didn't do good job). The authors have command over the subject. They did excellent job building the concepts. U got to be strong C++ developer to understnd intricasies of ATL internal though. This book is a must have for anyone who wants to program ATL.
Rating:
Summary: Very poor book. Reads like user's guide & offers nothing new
Review: I must confess that I've read all previous reviews & am @ a loss as to what all the high ratings are all about. I've read the book & found nothing in it worth reading. Chapter 2, dealing with ATL Smart Types, was a bit interesting but offered nothing I would not have been able to infer myself via trial & error anyway. Appendix B offers a good list but is also nothing I can't get from a class diagram. I too was interested in Connection Points in ATL but found Chapter 8 to be non-contiguous & struggled to make it through it twice so as to try & understand. @ the end, I was more confused than when I started. I have, & am also currently, coding with MFC & ATL connection points. Conceptually, you need to understand what connection points are all about & then let the framework do the dirty work anyway. That is what a framework is for. From there on, you code the business logic & be done. Yes, ATL is closer to the metal but you can still use the class wizard & visual studio to get the job done. When I think of ATL, I think small, fast & true multithreading. These topics & themes were only sparsly covered in the book. Lastly, I found the examples used in the book especially poor, lacking context, & most certainly not mainstream. I would have expected this book to be far more concise & to the point & not just present a list of disconnected topics. I would have expected this book to be authoritative. I strongly feel your time is better spent otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Solid book that explains the topic and the reasons why you should do something a certain way.
Rating:
Summary: Great Insight on ATL
Review: I read the book and it was fantastic. It is a great book for intermediate programmer. It contains a solid concept about all the member functions of ATL has to offer. Also Rector and Sells explain the IUnknown derived classes most effectively. I am a student and it is a very easy reading book.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book
Review: Many have pointed out how well this book describes the internals of ATL, and I agree. But with the description, it tells the reader why such implementation detail is important to know and how such implementation detail can lead to atl pitfalls, and most importantly, how one can avoid such pitfalls. It is a well written practical book.
Rating:
Summary: I Feel Cheated!
Review: I'm a masochist when it comes to slogging through source code to figure out how things work. This book cheated me out of months of torture.
Rating:
Summary: An Extremely Beautiful Book for the Mature Professional
Review: This book is beautiful, its just very beautiful. Everything is explained from the beginning in a clear and consise way. Anyhow you should have had some exposure to COM and C++ Templates. (Don Box and B. Stroustap will more than do it for you, the great Chappel book won't be enough.) Knowing about the Win32 API and framework, knowing about the OLE stuff will help in the later Chapters. It is ok if you have forgotten it all, a previous exposure to it just helps that all the explanation fall into place.Anyhow after having some exposure to STL this should be required reading. Just to get an idea of the power of combining C++ multiple inheritance, templates and preprocessor makros. I heartfully recommend the book to every mature software professional.
Rating:
Summary: Consider this Required Reading
Review: This is the only real documentation available for ATL AFAIC. Frankly, I couldn't use ATL without this book. It covers just about everything you need to know to get going with the ATL, including coverage of areas where the MS documentation is severely sparse (like ATL-implemented event sinks) or just plain wrong. That said, this is not a good place to start if you have no prior COM experience. Get Don Box's Essential COM and Chappell's Understanding ActiveX and OLE if you're having trouble wrapping your head around this stuff.
|
