Rating: 
Summary: The Best Introductory C++ Book!
Review: After reading a lot of other C++ books, I decided to buy Savitch's Absolute C++. Well, you cannot imagine how I am happy with such a book. In my opinion, THIS IS THE BEST introductory C++ Book. It is clear, complete, and up-to-date. Simply wonderful.
Thanks Prof. Savitch.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginers
Review: An excellent book for anyone wanting to learn c++.
Has a lot of useful tips, exercises, etc...
Filled with examples.
It makes interesting reading too (with all the colorful annotations).
Savitch deserves 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to learn C++ this is it
Review: i bought C++ How to program(textbook for school) and Sam teach yourself C++ 21 day(after failed my c++ class) before this book. After reading reviews for this book, I decide to buy this book for the "Class, pointer and ADT" stuff that I didn't get from C++ How to program. After reading some chapters, i found the book is not really for the beginner. I need a book that explains concepts in a clear manner. Absolute C++ fails to achieve that. Now I really don't know what to do with my next class(Data Structure).
Rating: 
Summary: meander, not consistent, overall not great
Review: i bought C++ How to program(textbook for school) and Sam teach yourself C++ 21 day(after failed my c++ class) before this book. After reading reviews for this book, I decide to buy this book for the "Class, pointer and ADT" stuff that I didn't get from C++ How to program. After reading some chapters, i found the book is not really for the beginner. I need a book that explains concepts in a clear manner. Absolute C++ fails to achieve that. Now I really don't know what to do with my next class(Data Structure).
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book
Review: I have always hated and feared C++. But after I got this book I began to like programming with it. It is good for
- beginners
- intermediate levels
- advanced levels. Advanced students and professional programmers can use it as a reference also. It is a great book for reference. If you want to learn C++ then just get it. It is worth every penny spent on it.
Rating:
Summary: The best C++ book I have ever read!!!
Review: I have been learning C++ for a few months now. I have bought and read 8 books including Dietel & Dietel's How To Program, Bjorne Stoustrup's C++ Programming Language, and Sames Teach Yourself C++. While Dietel does have a good chapter 5 on pointers, Sams explains classes in a clear manner and Bjorne explains how to use the language, I would have to say that This book combines all the positives of the other books without all the negatives the other books have. It was an [item price] that I was more than happy to spend now that I have read 500 pages out of this book in 2 days.
Rating:
Summary: Best C++ book to sufficiently explain the syntax
Review: I have been out of college for 7 years now, and have been a programmer all that time. When I graduated, although I knew enough C++ "to be dangerous", I was uncomfortable with the language. With many years experience under by belt, I now understand why I (and many of my graduating classmates) were so confused and uncomfortable with C++ -- Syntax!C++ is very flexible and powerful. I've been tought that. Only no one every showed me exactly why. Probably because in order to do powerful things in C++ requires a mastery of all the syntax. There are slightly different ways to overload functions and operators (both binary and uniary), and friend classes of multi-class inheritence etc etc. My professors in college did a good job of explaining the theory of Classes, Inheretence, Overloading, Templates and so on. However, when it came down to actually writting some code, I had now idea how to implement all these grand abstract theoretical ideas. Therefore as a result, I wrote long confusing C code using the C++ compiler to get around my lack of knowledge how to actualy write the syntax. "Absolute C++" is the first C++ book I've read which does an excellent job of teaching you about syntax on the Nuts-and-Bolts aspects of implementation. (Especially overloading of functions and operators; different ways to invoke different constructors; the different ways you can invoke an overloaded assignment operator; doing all the above as an abstract base class; doing all the above as a template; how namespaces work.) Learning about high-level theory of object-oriented programming is a great thing! But, there comes a time when you have to know how to actually express your idea in a programming language (i.e. syntax.) That's the part my professors weren't good at. And unfortunately, no one seems to think the syntax matters anymore. Perhaps that's why software is so bug-riden and inefficient these days, because there's so many programmers who simply don't know how to write good software taking advantage of all the complex syntactic features of a language. In fact, if you read customer reviews for ANY computer programming book here on Amazon, there's always a lot of people complaining about "not enough examples." I think what they really are trying to say is, "Okay I understand the theory, how do I program all of that?" I just wish someone would write a C++ book entitled "Become a human compiler for the C++ language in 21 days" that focused solely on the language, and not general OO theory. I suppose I could read the BNF description of the language, but that seems more difficult. The reason I'm so Gung-Ho about learning the syntax is due in part to this book "Absolute C++". I was one of a sea of engineers working for IBM last year, and our department took a refresher C++ course which this book was offered. The professor tought the language, and didn't talk at all about OO theory. Suddenly everything made sense! All that high-level theory in college started to come together and I "got it". He taught us what the compiler was doing as it interpreted various syntax statements. That practical low-level understanding strengthend my high-level general OO knowledge so much that I became a much better software engineer. I wish all programming books would spend more time on the practical syntatic details. Not only does it make you a stronger programmer, but a better software designer as well.
Rating:
Summary: Best C++ book to sufficiently explain the syntax
Review: I have been out of college for 7 years now, and have been a programmer all that time. When I graduated, although I knew enough C++ "to be dangerous", I was uncomfortable with the language. With many years experience under by belt, I now understand why I (and many of my graduating classmates) were so confused and uncomfortable with C++ -- Syntax! C++ is very flexible and powerful. I've been tought that. Only no one every showed me exactly why. Probably because in order to do powerful things in C++ requires a mastery of all the syntax. There are slightly different ways to overload functions and operators (both binary and uniary), and friend classes of multi-class inheritence etc etc. My professors in college did a good job of explaining the theory of Classes, Inheretence, Overloading, Templates and so on. However, when it came down to actually writting some code, I had now idea how to implement all these grand abstract theoretical ideas. Therefore as a result, I wrote long confusing C code using the C++ compiler to get around my lack of knowledge how to actualy write the syntax. "Absolute C++" is the first C++ book I've read which does an excellent job of teaching you about syntax on the Nuts-and-Bolts aspects of implementation. (Especially overloading of functions and operators; different ways to invoke different constructors; the different ways you can invoke an overloaded assignment operator; doing all the above as an abstract base class; doing all the above as a template; how namespaces work.) Learning about high-level theory of object-oriented programming is a great thing! But, there comes a time when you have to know how to actually express your idea in a programming language (i.e. syntax.) That's the part my professors weren't good at. And unfortunately, no one seems to think the syntax matters anymore. Perhaps that's why software is so bug-riden and inefficient these days, because there's so many programmers who simply don't know how to write good software taking advantage of all the complex syntactic features of a language. In fact, if you read customer reviews for ANY computer programming book here on Amazon, there's always a lot of people complaining about "not enough examples." I think what they really are trying to say is, "Okay I understand the theory, how do I program all of that?" I just wish someone would write a C++ book entitled "Become a human compiler for the C++ language in 21 days" that focused solely on the language, and not general OO theory. I suppose I could read the BNF description of the language, but that seems more difficult. The reason I'm so Gung-Ho about learning the syntax is due in part to this book "Absolute C++". I was one of a sea of engineers working for IBM last year, and our department took a refresher C++ course which this book was offered. The professor tought the language, and didn't talk at all about OO theory. Suddenly everything made sense! All that high-level theory in college started to come together and I "got it". He taught us what the compiler was doing as it interpreted various syntax statements. That practical low-level understanding strengthend my high-level general OO knowledge so much that I became a much better software engineer. I wish all programming books would spend more time on the practical syntatic details. Not only does it make you a stronger programmer, but a better software designer as well.
Rating:
Summary: Best C++ book to sufficiently explain the syntax
Review: I have been out of college for 7 years now, and have been a programmer all that time. When I graduated, although I knew enough C++ "to be dangerous", I was uncomfortable with the language. With many years experience under by belt, I now understand why I (and many of my graduating classmates) were so confused and uncomfortable with C++ -- Syntax! C++ is very flexible and powerful. I've been tought that. Only no one every showed me exactly why. Probably because in order to do powerful things in C++ requires a mastery of all the syntax. There are slightly different ways to overload functions and operators (both binary and uniary), and friend classes of multi-class inheritence etc etc. My professors in college did a good job of explaining the theory of Classes, Inheretence, Overloading, Templates and so on. However, when it came down to actually writting some code, I had now idea how to implement all these grand abstract theoretical ideas. Therefore as a result, I wrote long confusing C code using the C++ compiler to get around my lack of knowledge how to actualy write the syntax. "Absolute C++" is the first C++ book I've read which does an excellent job of teaching you about syntax on the Nuts-and-Bolts aspects of implementation. (Especially overloading of functions and operators; different ways to invoke different constructors; the different ways you can invoke an overloaded assignment operator; doing all the above as an abstract base class; doing all the above as a template; how namespaces work.) Learning about high-level theory of object-oriented programming is a great thing! But, there comes a time when you have to know how to actually express your idea in a programming language (i.e. syntax.) That's the part my professors weren't good at. And unfortunately, no one seems to think the syntax matters anymore. Perhaps that's why software is so bug-riden and inefficient these days, because there's so many programmers who simply don't know how to write good software taking advantage of all the complex syntactic features of a language. In fact, if you read customer reviews for ANY computer programming book here on Amazon, there's always a lot of people complaining about "not enough examples." I think what they really are trying to say is, "Okay I understand the theory, how do I program all of that?" I just wish someone would write a C++ book entitled "Become a human compiler for the C++ language in 21 days" that focused solely on the language, and not general OO theory. I suppose I could read the BNF description of the language, but that seems more difficult. The reason I'm so Gung-Ho about learning the syntax is due in part to this book "Absolute C++". I was one of a sea of engineers working for IBM last year, and our department took a refresher C++ course which this book was offered. The professor tought the language, and didn't talk at all about OO theory. Suddenly everything made sense! All that high-level theory in college started to come together and I "got it". He taught us what the compiler was doing as it interpreted various syntax statements. That practical low-level understanding strengthend my high-level general OO knowledge so much that I became a much better software engineer. I wish all programming books would spend more time on the practical syntatic details. Not only does it make you a stronger programmer, but a better software designer as well.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Insightful Book on C++
Review: I have used Savitch's text for additional insight into the features of C++. Dr. Savitch gives both clear explanations and examples to illustrate his points. I would recommend the text to my students as an exceptional supplement to a course on scientific computing using C++.
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