jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) (06/16/89)
Can anyone provide more information on the uncommented [or commented] books below [the following extracted from a note by bs]. Which have you seen in [better] bookstores? Which have you sucessfully ordered from publishers? Can you give us a one paragraph review of what you thought of the book? > Stroustrup, Bjarne: "The C++ Programming Language," Addison-Wesley, 1986. "The Bible." Similar in style and content to K&R for C. Quite out of date in regards to new goodies promised for 2.0. An update available soon? The examples are good, but small, and one must program in C++ for awhile before one begins to appreciate them. Available in many computer book stores. > Wiener, Richard S., Pinson, Lewis J.: "An Introduction to Object-Oriented > Programming and C++," Addison-Wesley, 1988. Famous for its mistakes, questionable style, ugly "lineprinter" font. But has lots of long program examples. Available in some computer book stores. > Berry, John: "The Waite Group's C++ Programming," Howard W. Sams & Company, > 1988. > > Pohl, Ira: "C++ for C programmers," Benjamin Cummings. 1989. I haven't seen it, but I've heard its good, that it starts right out with meaningful examples since it assumes you already know C. > Dewhurst, Steve and Stark, Kathy: "Programming in C++," Prentice Hall, > ISBN 0-13-723156-3. > > Lippman, Stan: "A C++ Primer," Addison Wesley ISBN: 0-201-16487-6 > > Hansen, Tony: "The C++ Answer Book," Addison Wesley ISBN: 0-201-11497-6 > (announced) > > Gorlen, Keith: "A Guide to Object-Oriented Programming in C++," > John Wiley & Sons (announced) > > Eckel, Bruce: "Using C++," Osborne/McGraw-Hill (July, 1989)
jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) (06/17/89)
> Stroustrup, Bjarne: "The C++ Programming Language," Addison-Wesley, 1986. "The Bible." Similar in style and content to K&R for C. Quite out of date in regards to new goodies promised for 2.0. An update available soon? The examples are good, but small, and one must program in C++ for awhile before one begins to appreciate them. Available in many computer book stores. ISBN 0-201-12078-X. 328 pages. $26 [when I bought it] > Wiener, Richard S., Pinson, Lewis J.: "An Introduction to Object-Oriented > Programming and C++," Addison-Wesley, 1988. Famous for its mistakes, questionable style, ugly "lineprinter" font. But has lots of long program examples. Available in some computer book stores. ISBN 0-201-15413-7. 273 pages. > Berry, John: "The Waite Group's C++ Programming," Howard W. Sams & Company, > 1988. I've had this for awhile, but haven't gotten into it. Large, 381 pages. ISBN 0-672-22619-7. Has separate chapter on Unix/Ms-Dos usage. Tends to the wordy side. Strange diagrams. $25 > Pohl, Ira: "C++ for C programmers," Benjamin Cummings. 1989. I just got this last night. Looks like it might be readonable. $30 ISBN 0-8053-0910-1. 244 pages. > Dewhurst, Steve and Stark, Kathy: "Programming in C++," Prentice Hall, > ISBN 0-13-723156-3. > > Lippman, Stan: "A C++ Primer," Addison Wesley ISBN: 0-201-16487-6 > > Hansen, Tony: "The C++ Answer Book," Addison Wesley ISBN: 0-201-11497-6 > (announced) > > Gorlen, Keith: "A Guide to Object-Oriented Programming in C++," > John Wiley & Sons (announced) > > Eckel, Bruce: "Using C++," Osborne/McGraw-Hill (July, 1989) ----------
jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) (06/23/89)
Hu, David: "C/C++ for Expert Systems," Management Information Source, ISBN 0-943518-86-5. 565 pages. $25 I spent an hour or two scanning [not reading] this book, and it seems a strange hodge-podge of Lisp, C, C++, Smalltalk, Prolog discussions, etc. The example programs are primarily C-like, not C++ style. I wouldn't recommend this book in general, but it may be useful if you want to try doing Lisp-like things in C++ [but use classes and virtual functions, as opposed to the C-like approach discussed] or Expert System stuff. Its kind of fun if you have a twisted mind just because it covers such a wide range of stuff.
jdn@mas1.UUCP (Jeff Nisewanger) (06/23/89)
In article <6590154@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) writes: >> Berry, John: "The Waite Group's C++ Programming," Howard W. Sams & Company, >> 1988. > >I've had this for awhile, but haven't gotten into it. Large, 381 pages. >ISBN 0-672-22619-7. Has separate chapter on Unix/Ms-Dos usage. Tends >to the wordy side. Strange diagrams. $25 At least in the printing that I read it had a rather high rate of bugs in the example code. Also I think I remember the example code was not very substantial. Jeff Nisewanger apple!mas1!jdn
jon@hanauma (Jon Claerbout) (06/23/89)
I'm an intermediate level C programmer who wants to learn OOP and C++. I just spent about a week reading from the four books below: Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language," Not for beginners like me. Berry, John: "The Waite Group's C++ Programming," First 70 pages were OK. Then I switched to the other books. Sessions, Roger "Reusable data structures for C" (Prentice Hall 88) A good read. Clear code, clearly motivated. I got about half way through. Wiener and Pinson "An Introduction to OOP and C++" On first sight, I didn't like the extensive code, but on reading the book, I changed my mind. I found the code easy to read and very helpful. It is much nicer to have complete runnable code than mere fragments. They choose their examples very well. I learned the most from Sessions and from Weiner and Pinson. As teachers, I'd rate them "A" and the other two "C". I couldn't find the other books mentioned in comp.lang.c++
sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz ) (06/24/89)
In article <6590167@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) writes: >Hu, David: "C/C++ for Expert Systems," Management Information Source, >ISBN 0-943518-86-5. 565 pages. $25 > >I spent an hour or two scanning [not reading] this book, and it seems a >strange hodge-podge of Lisp, C, C++, Smalltalk, Prolog discussions, etc. > >I wouldn't recommend this book in general, but it may be useful if you want Here's my review: I found it one of the worst books I have ever come across. My background is Lisp and Expert Systems, including writing the inference engine for a commercial expert system shell (in Lisp). What Hu did in this book was write about his company's (now defunct, I think) Lisp-based expert system shell/toolkit, making an incredibly incomplete and sloppy effort at translating the Lisp into C, and almost ignoring C++. He glosses over all the difficult issues in a Lisp to C translation, like memory management and the symbol data type. He says nothing about real inference engine design, implying that the naive designs you find in primers are how they are done, when in fact they are impractical for real problems due to combinatorially explosive algorithms. There's some code for a parser that can read and tokenize a list of symbols in parentheses, and somehow that gives Hu license to forget that this is a book on C/C++, so by the end of the book there's page after page of examples in Lisp with no justification or explanation of what this has to do with C or how to convert it. In short, "C/C++ for Expert Systems" is not about C, is definitely not about C++, is naive and confusing about Expert Systems, and if it is meant as marketing hype for Hu's company's product, it didn't work. If I didn't feel so strongly about a publisher trying to exploit the hot topics of C++ and Expert Systems I wouldn't even waste my time reviewing the book. -- sidney markowitz <internet: sidney@ai.mit.edu or sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu>
randolph@ektools.UUCP (Gary L. Randolph) (06/27/89)
In article <8095@saturn.ucsc.edu> sidney@saturn.ucsc.edu (Sidney Markowitz ) writes: >In article <6590167@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) writes: >>Hu, David: "C/C++ for Expert Systems," Management Information Source, >>ISBN 0-943518-86-5. 565 pages. $25 >> >>I spent an hour or two scanning [not reading] this book, and it seems a >>strange hodge-podge of Lisp, C, C++, Smalltalk, Prolog discussions, etc. >> >>I wouldn't recommend this book in general, but it may be useful if you want > >Here's my review: I found it one of the worst books I have ever come >across. My background is Lisp and Expert Systems, including writing ...More negative comments...With which I agree But on a positive note, I am happy to state that I have been reading a *VERY* good book for the past couple of weeks: C++ Primer Stanley B. Lippman ISBN 0-201-16487-6 I am not finished (it contains 451 pages) but I have read enough to be able to say that it is my favorite. I feel that this book may be the Harbison and Steele of C++ (I believe that is high praise). The book is based on 2.0 and is very current, especially if you tape a hardcopy of article 3587 to the back (A Lippman update). The appendix has a good deal of useful information on things like the I/O library, MI and other 1.2/2.0 compatibility issues. I have found clear, unambiguous text, and useful examples and exercises. A definite 'thumbs up'. Gary ...!rochester!kodak!ektools!randolph
jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) (07/06/89)
>I am not finished (it contains 451 pages) but I have read enough to be able >to say that it is my favorite. I feel that this book may be the Harbison >and Steele of C++ (I believe that is high praise). The book is based on >2.0 and is very current, especially if you tape a hardcopy of article >3587 to the back (A Lippman update). The appendix has a good deal of useful >information on things like the I/O library, MI and other 1.2/2.0 >compatibility issues. I have found clear, unambiguous text, and useful >examples and exercises. A definite 'thumbs up'. Yes, except if one has C and C++ experience, and is mainly interested in the fine details of C++, and 2.0 changes -- then ignore the author's recommendations and skip over chapters 1-5. Lippman recommends scanning over these chapters even if one has C/C++ experience -- and I almost threw the book away before getting to chapters 6+.... I'm a little concerned that -- In the nature of a primer -- Lippman is not too rigorous about what he says in chapters 1-5 -- I kept finding myself saying "that's not quite right!" I hope the following chapters are more rigorous, otherwise I'll be learning a lot of the fine details of the C++ language wrong. What I really need is a rigorous, complete reference manual for the 2.0 version of the language.
randolph@ektools.UUCP (Gary L. Randolph) (07/07/89)
In article <6590180@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) writes: >> ...my paragraph which praises the Lippman book... >Yes, except if one has C and C++ experience, and is mainly interested in >the fine details of C++, and 2.0 changes >... I'm a little concerned that >-- In the nature of a primer -- Lippman is not too rigorous about what he >says in chapters 1-5 -- I kept finding myself saying "that's not quite right!" I don't really want a list of these things, but by "not quite right", might you mean "not quite complete for my taste"? >... What I really need >is a rigorous, complete reference manual for the 2.0 version of the language. I believe that would be the reference manual on which Lippman based his book. I have been waiting so long for a clear, dependable book at an altitude somewhat lower than BS, yet above some of the others, that I have to stand by my belief that Lippman provides an excellent primer that is far better at targeting the masses than any other C++ book I have seen. Gary