Thread: C++ Book Recommendations

Originally Posted by coletek

I totally recommend "C++ In Plain English 3rd Edition" (ISBN 0-7645-3545-5). Its the best one I've found. A awesome book to read and an also serves as an awesome quick reference - I mean it, its the best and only ~50AUD. Its the best C++ never written to learn from and use as a reference.

Having not read the book myself, I am hesitant to judge it by its table of contents alone (at least better than judging a book by its cover ), but something looked amiss when I checked its table of contents from Amazon. After reading Glassborow's review for ACCU I understand why: according to Glassborow, it does not teach modern C++ even to a satisfactory novice level.

Originally Posted by laserlight

Having not read the book myself, I am hesitant to judge it by its table of contents alone (at least better than judging a book by its cover ), but something looked amiss when I checked its table of contents from Amazon. After reading Glassborow's review for ACCU I understand why: according to Glassborow, it does not teach modern C++ even to a satisfactory novice level.

Next time ya in a book store, just check it out, trust me it serves as a very awesome reference - its layout is terrific and reads very well. Half the book is a reference, which lists/compares operators, keywords, pre processor elements, library functions, io stream classes. And the other half of the book is a C++ tutorial. Trust me its really good - I've read (and flicked through) about 10 C++ books and found this to be the best.

I come from a C world so, if you don't know C, then maybe this is not the book for you. But if you know C, this is the book for you.

The only downfall I have with the book is it has notes for Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, I'm a Linux hacker, so I would of liked notes also on gcc/g++ - but hey, such is life.

Looking further I discovered that the author never covers string or wstring anywhere in this book.

Sorry, but I trust the ACCU review more than the opinion of a C++ novice. If the above sentence about this book is true (and I have no reason to doubt its veracity), then it's enough to make me dismiss the book completely.

For example, the "io stream classes" you claim there's a reference for don't exist anymore. According to the review, the reference is for the pre-standard version of iostreams, but the standard versions have changed in a few quite significant areas.

Please read the review that laserlight linked to. It points out several major deficiencies of the book, and I have no reason to doubt that the author is right when he says that those are not isolated incidents.

Originally Posted by coletek

Next time ya in a book store, just check it out, trust me it serves as a very awesome reference - its layout is terrific and reads very well. Half the book is a reference, which lists/compares operators, keywords, pre processor elements, library functions, io stream classes. And the other half of the book is a C++ tutorial. Trust me its really good - I've read (and flicked through) about 10 C++ books and found this to be the best.

Okay, using only that book as a reference, tell me what this program does without running it:

Code:

#include <map>
#include <string>
#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    using namespace std;

    map<string, size_t> word_counts;

    string word;
    while (cin >> word)
    {
        ++word_counts[word];
    }

    for (map<string, size_t>::iterator iter = word_counts.begin(), end = word_counts.end();
        iter != end; ++iter)
    {
        cout << iter->first << ": " << iter->second << endl;
    }
}

Originally Posted by coletek

I come from a C world so, if you don't know C, then maybe this is not the book for you. But if you know C, this is the book for you.

According to Glassborow, the problem with this book is its content. The book teaches C++ as if it were merely a "better" C. Modern C++ puts the C++ standard library to good use and makes use of idioms that are not found in C. Apparently, despite being published years after the C++ Standard was ratified, the book even has examples that are pre-standard.

EDIT:
Actually, considering that Glassborow cited gets() and a failure to distinguish between a pointer and an array, it is conceivable that Overland does not even teach C++ as a "better" C in this book. (I actually stole that "better C" phrase from a customer review on Amazon.)

Originally Posted by chiefmonkey

I see that the majority of the recommended advanced books have to do with STL. Is STL widely used in the software industry these days? or is it a decaying technology? I just wanted to gather some information before I dig into the books. Thanks!!

STL is widely, but not universally, used. What is more important is to understand templates in general, and perhaps the iterator concept (which is extremely powerful even without STL). A lot of people are rolling their own template algorithms instead of using STL, but STL is a great place to start.