C++ Practical Programming

I'm a recent convert in the IT field from networking to programming. Anyway, I took a few elective classes in college on programming, mostly VB and visual C#. Very basic stuff. I ordered the number 2 book recommended on this very website: C++ Practical Programming published by O'Reilly, 2nd edition, the one with the squirrel sniffing the purple C++ logo. Now, I will end this jibberish and get to my question. My prior experience being in networking, I know firsthand that technology changes all the time. My question is, does this book adequately reflect any changes in the C++ standards? Is this a good book to learn from for a beginner? I have plenty of time and resources for self study. I downloaded the latest version of the free compiler from bloodshed.net and I'm going to dive into this book and the tutorials on this site. Ultimately I want to get experienced enough to work in the field, but that is years down the road. Thanks for any insight into this book.

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My question is, does this book adequately reflect any changes in the C++ standards?

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Well, If you want books to immediately reflect changes, you're going to be disappointed.
For example, The recent C++11 standard(which has been in discussion for quite a long time) is not still completely supported in most compilers and I'm yet to see books recommending the use of those new features.

Learn everything you can from the book... work it page by page, type up the examples, work with them, break them, fix them, repeat as necessary then go on to the next page... until you finish the book.

Then get copies of the standards themselves and play "Catch Up"... improving your knowledge from the standards themselves.

Programming languages change very slowly... the latest C standard is C-99 ... almost 12 years old so I wouldn't think you're in too much trouble getting started with what you've got.

The one area I'd recommend for immediate improvement is the DevC++ compiler... it's been abandoned for almost 5 years and is now horribly out of date. For C++ you might want to look into MinGW or Visual C++.

Thanks for the heads up. I just switched to VC++ express. Thanks again!