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Rating: 
Summary: Almost perfect
Review: I am a student of Information Systems Science and few weeks ago got my first job as a software developer (Java). During college courses I often wondered how the courses and textbooks would actually map to real life work as a professional programmer.Now that I have some experience as a new pro, I know that many books and courses just don't deliver as far as real work is concerned. But I noticed that there were couple of books that were of constant help during a(ny) day at the office. Those books were the Core Java 2 books and Core JSP book of the Core series edited and partly written by Horstmann. After finishing my first programming task, I noticed that knowing the syntax was far from enough in my job: I was not just a programmer "monkey" implementing someone's design. I was hired to be a developer who had to design his stuff from scratch, often without any help from the company staff. I began to hunt for a good yet simple design and architechture book that would explain a simple design process and also give pointers on how to implement the design into decent code. The Rational Unified Process that was explained to us in lectures was way too huge a system for me to use on small scale projects. I had hard time finding books that would fill the bill, but I managed to find some. Because I had good experiences from Horstmann's previous work, I bought this book. Good news: the book is good and does it's job more than adequately. Bad news: even the title has 'Java' in it, this book does everything in C++. It wouldn't matter so much if the book was mostly about design issues, but it covers lots of C++ specific details like STL, memory management, multiple inheritance, etc. It also has two moot chapters: A C++ crash course and a Java crash course. Who buys this book to learn either of these languages? The preface says this is a book for the reader who knows the syntax already! So, I would have given the book 5 stars, but I want to drop 1 or 1.5 stars because I had to skip entire chapters because the book was not a match with it's title. I would have loved to exchange the language crash course chapters for a couple more detailed design and architechture chapters or some sample projects. For a C++ programmer with basic understanding of syntax: a five star recommendation, for a Java programmer with basic understanding of syntax, 3.5 star recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: Worked for me
Review: This is an excellent second book on C++ or Java. Although I was an experienced Fortran programmer, I needed to learn C++ in a hurry for a career change. I read Kernighan & Ritchie, another book (which I never look at) and this one. I'm constantly referring back to this book in my work. It is strong on OO concepts, and good programming practices. It even shows you work arounds that allow you to emulate OO Java features that don't exist in C++, like virtual construction. I'm crazy about this book!
Rating:
Summary: Reasonable book for intermediate developers
Review: Useful for its comparison of how OOD models are translated into C++ and Java.An okay book for developers who have had some experience of OOD and C++ or Java development. However, for the experienced designer/developer there are better books that deal with OOD/UML and C++/Java separately (authors that come to mind are Fowler, Gamma et al, Meyers, Murray, Booch, Rumbaugh and, of course, Stroustrup)
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