dks@apple.com (D. K. Smith) (10/10/90)
Hi all, Due to the flood of C++ books out there, I figured I would ask for the net opinion on favorable, useful, and useless books on the topic. -------------- I've heard the C++ book by Weiner & Pinson was not very good. True? People say Stroustrup's first book on C++ is analagous to K&R in its terseness and readibility - which is not a bad thing depending on whether you need a reference or a tutorial. Is this accurate??? Any comments on the following: _C++ for Pascal Programmers_ - Pohl?? _C++ for C Programmers_ I looked at these books and they look identical! Except of course for the first couple chapters bridging the gap between Pascal and C type decls and defs. Also (get this) the C version (the hip model) was 28.95, while the (not so cool) pascal version (with 2-3 extra chapters) was 24.95. Check it out! Or what about Bruce Eckel's _Using C++_? Any comments on this one? Any experiences with _The Annotated C++ Reference Manual_ by Ellis & Stroustrup ?? It looked "totally" complete. But you can't judge a.... And what about the Mac specific titles... _Elements of C++ Macintosh Programming_ by Weston. _C++ Programming with MacApp_ by Wilson, et.al. Also, any good / bad experiences with any other titles out there? Please reply to me directly. I don't want to clog up the other business in this newsgroup with book reviews! thanx, dk
jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) (10/16/90)
In article <45531@apple.Apple.COM> dks@apple.com (D. K. Smith) writes: > >Hi all, > >Due to the flood of C++ books out there, I figured I would >ask for the net opinion on favorable, useful, and useless books >on the topic. The question of books comes up every month or two. Note that there are dozens of "C++" books on the market nowadays, that run the full gamot of quality. The short short answer remains very simple: Lippman "A C++ Primer" still the preferred text for most people's everyday use. Before posting to the nets "the facts" about C++, people should consult: Ellis & Stroustrup "The Annotated C++ Reference Manual" which is as close to a definitive answer to what the language is that we have, at least until the standardization committee publishes something. Total C/C++ neophytes might do well to spend a day or two breezing through the programming examples of: Stevens "Teach Yourself C++" For a historical reference to the origins of the language consider: Stroustrup "The C++ Programming Language" --but please don't consider it a reliable source for the fine grained details of the language! People who post "facts" from the original manual do us all a disservice. Consult instead Stroustrup's writings in "ARM" to get his current statements of what the language is. Use the original manual: "The C++ Programming Language" to find out "what it use to be." Along with this manual is an excellent text of worked examples: Hanson "The C++ Answer Book" Which contains "correct" examples of how to write Int classes, Strings etc. [many other texts get these "simple" things wrong, sigh.] Hanson's text concentrates mainly on how to write "simple" useful stand-alone classes. The other extreme is the excellent recent addition: Gorlen etc. "Data Abstraction and Object Oriented Programming in C++" which describes Gorlen's NIH [NIHCL, OOPS] classes, their use, and their development. These classes are the "grand scheme" approch ala' Smalltalk where all classes inherit from a common base class. Two other books of general interest, not restricting themselves to C++ [and in fact, their C++ examples have problems] are: Booth "Object Oriented Design" covering design methodologies for object oriented programming, and Khashafian and Abnous "Object Orientation...." which is an excellent OOP survey book, and also the place to read for issues of identity, persistence, databases, etc... There are other good books that closely overlap this list which I do not mention. There are good books targeted to specific audiences that I do not mention. And there are lots of "C++" books out there written simply to capitalize on the rapidly expanding C++ market. The above list is not recommended lightly -- I've read almost all C++ books for the general market that were not transparently bad just from looking at a few pages [And I've read a lot of books that were transparently bad just because they were some of the first to market] Also, note that Jean Chrtistophe publishes a reasonably complete list of C++ books once a month.
ajp@hpopd.HP.COM (Andy Pearce) (10/19/90)
jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) responds ... |Two other books of general interest, not restricting themselves to C++ |[and in fact, their C++ examples have problems] are: | |Booth "Object Oriented Design" | |covering design methodologies for object oriented programming, and I haven't seen this one, although I am reading a book by Grady Booch on the same subject. If this is the book you mean, can you tell us what problems you see with C++ in the examples? |Khashafian and Abnous "Object Orientation...." | |which is an excellent OOP survey book, and also the place to read for issues |of identity, persistence, databases, etc... This looks interesting. Do you have the full title, or ISBN ? --ajp ajp@hpsesuka.hp.com
jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) (10/23/90)
In article <8410004@hpopd.HP.COM> ajp@hpopd.HP.COM (Andy Pearce) writes: |jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK) responds ... | ||Two other books of general interest, not restricting themselves to C++ ||[and in fact, their C++ examples have problems] are: || ||Booth "Object Oriented Design" || ||covering design methodologies for object oriented programming, and | |I haven't seen this one, although I am reading a book by Grady Booch on |the same subject. If this is the book you mean, can you tell us what |problems you see with C++ in the examples? Booch claims his mistakes are corrected in the second printing, so you may look to see what printing your copy is. On first printings both books had the same problem with their examples: member functions that were suppose to be polymorphic accepted parameters declared as pass-by-value, rather than pass-by-reference. This leads to the well known "slicing problem" were any additional members defined in derived classes are not copied across the interface, but rather are "sliced off" the end of the object. [ A smart C++ compiler would always issue a warning when an object with virtual functions is passed-by-value ] ||Khashafian and Abnous "Object Orientation...." || ||which is an excellent OOP survey book, and also the place to read for issues ||of identity, persistence, databases, etc... | |This looks interesting. Do you have the full title, or ISBN ? "Object Orientation: concepts, languages, databases, user interfaces" Setrag Khoshafian & Razmik Abnous John Wiley & Sons 1990 ISBN 0-471-51802-6 ISBN 0-471-51801-8 (pbk) 433 pages, $29.95