Thread: trouble with a book

Do not buy either a ....for dummies or a ...in 21 days book. Neither of them will teach you c++ to even an acceptable standard. If you seriously want to learn c++ from a book then get hold of these.....

firstly Accelerated c++ by andrew koenig and barbara moo.

secondly the c++ primer by stan lippmann.

Those two will teach you the majority of the syntax of c++. Something else you will find useful is Thinking in c++ by bruce eckel. This is a 2 volume work that is freely available from his website. Excellent book and a perfect partner to the first two.

When you have been learning for about 6 months to 1 year then its time to invest in some heavier reading.

Effective c++,more effective c++ and effective STL all by scott meyers are worth their weight in gold.
Exceptional c++ and more exceptional c++ by herb sutter.These again are excellent but most of the information in these two is freely available at herbs website.
The c++ programming language by bjarne stroustrup. This is a book that personally i dont like much but i wouldnt be without it. Dont get me wrong it contains an awful lot of advanced c++ information but is structured poorly and i think poorly written.
The c++ standard library by nicolai josuttis. This book is only really concerned with the part of c++ that used to be known as STL or the standard template library.It is an awesome reference for stl and also a good tutorial if you are not familiar with it. it is extremely well written and well structured.

tutorial.

I took a look at the C++ for Dummies, and it was the worst tutorial I have ever seen. It is completely horrible. If you are interested in learning C++, I recommend Beginning Visual C++ 6 by Ivor Horton. It teaches the basics of the C++ language (essentially C, but with a few extras that C++ allows, such as declaration of a variable anywhere you want) over a large number of chapters before even getting into the basics of OOP. Highly recommended.

Try out C++ in 24 Hrs by Jesse Liberty,then any book teaching OOP,and then,if u like may be VC++ and even .NET

Or if you dont have the money or just to lazy to go out and buy a book use this website that has FREE books online. ENJOY!!

http://www.maththinking.com/boat/computerbooks.html

NOTE look under Languages

there are some good books there. I noticed particularly the scott meyers effective c++ and more effective c++ and bruce eckels thinking in c++

Okay,
I was tricked into buying "c++ for dummies" also. It was a good 20 bucks down the drain.

So I went back to 'Barnes and Noble' and bought a highly recommend book for beginners that was called ' Beginning C++' by Ivor Horton.
_It has a total of 952 pages
_Its made to teach and be understandable to a beginner
_By the end of it, one should be an excellent c++ programmer and be able to help alot of people(expecially on these forums)
_It has all the references you need in the back
_This includes ascii text for most of the bases
_24hr support
_online website to download free source code from the book and other stuff
_It only costs 39.99 or 29.00 off of amazon(shipping adds up)
_The only draw back is that it doesn't include a cd, but WHO CARES?! It gives you the free everlasting membership to download anything you need.

This author is phenominal and I think that every C++ programmer should at least take a look at this book.

Oh Yeah, the only thing I have against with the "Beginning Visual C++ 6", is that it is made to teach you basically windows programming in c++. The "Beginning C++"(by the same author) has it all.

I'll second the recommendation for "Ivor Horton's Beginning C++". It's a great book, except for one section--skip the overly complex bitwise operator section in chapter 3. Nothing builds on it later, so just skip it and forget about it. That section is not typical of the rest of the book. In the rest of the book, Ivor Horton explains concepts thoroughly with two or three line code snippets before introducing basic program examples. Then, after every program example, he goes through the program, line by line, and explains what it does. At the end of every chapter there are 5 or 6 problems with model answers, which is very rare for a computer book, and I think absolutely necessary if you really want to learn programming.

A beginner pointed out to me that one problem with "Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++" is that sometimes he introduces a slightly more complicated example immediately, rather than a simple example that just demonstrates the concept at hand. After looking over the chapter on arrays, I have to agree with that criticism. I think the problem is that the editors tried to take Ivor Horton's Beginning C++ and condense it into the first 12 chapters of Beginning Visual C++, and some of the easier examples got left out. However, since he explains every program example, line by line, a beginner is never going to get lost and will still be able to follow along, and a beginner can always try some easier examples on their own. An advantage to learning C++ with Beginning Visual C++, is that since the C++ part is a shortened version, a lot of the less important concepts are omitted which allows the beginner to get a quicker overview of C++. Beginning C++ has a lot of information, and it's a great reference, but it takes a long time to work through the book because of its length.

I started off buying "Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days" and after a week, I threw it in the trash.