Rating:  - OK Book but just an overview
This book was recommended to me because I was coming from a Borland environment. I have been struggling to get into windows development and finding resources that are instructional to someone that has written many Console based apps, and is pretty knowledgable in OOP, has become a nightmare. Most of the books I have found are made toward beginers, and they all reitterate the same information for beginners. I almost believe that the writers out there either don't understand the languages themselves, or have descovered if they keep regurgitating the same novice information with a new cover they can sell more books to suckers thinking they will learn anything more than what an array is, or how to say "Hello, World!". This book did give me a good introduction to the user interface and slight language differences from my Borland experience. But it gives nothing more than an introduction. The examples are exactly as the title states "Step by Step". I do not see the relavence of the examples, nor there application to real world programming. This is a feel good book for anyone who would like to pretend that they are programming real windows applications; and have no real understanding of the language. The examples will walk you through it all so you don't have to understand or learn any more than that. Don't expect this book to tell you how any of this, or the examples relate to real applications. For example the window example has you create a window. Woohoo! I could figure that out from playing with the environment for 2 minutes. It will not tell you anymore about how to put real data or information into the window. Or, how to trigger new windows, or new information. What is worse is that Microsoft seems to want to keep all the knowledge to themselves, by way of the MS Press (once again reflecting back to my making money scheme, Bill you sly dog!).
Rating:  - The worst disaster in bookwriting EVER!
This is unbelievable!!! I just bought this book and thought: Ah, I've been out of programming... So this book can get me started in C++ again. No way. As usual with Microsoft in house writing this book looks ok, read ok but the software does not match the book. Yep, it's C++ alright but just try to install the MSDN or try to type in an example.... It all does not work. My occupation is not in the field of programming so I don't have much time to waste on this bull)(*# book. Having programmed in Basic, Pascal 5.5 and machine language (yep it's old but AT LEAST IT WORKED!!!) before I thought to give it a go... What a waste of time indeed!
Rating:  - Microsoft Visual C++ .NET S... is a very good choice to learn about OOP in the .NET C++ environment.
I bought this book over a month ago, and even though I am not finished reading it I believe that this is the best C++ book that you can buy in the market if you haven't been exposed to the .NET environment. I already know C++, but I wanted to learn about coding in the .NET environment, and so far even though the information in the first few chapters is too basic, there are many chapters in this book that teach you to design GUI stuff and utilize advanced functionality that only .NET can offer. Even the first few chapters had some new stuff too.
Rating:  - Not for experienced programmers either.
If you are an experienced C++ developer this book is not for you.
It is an introductory and very shallow overview of what .Net platform offers to a developer.
I do not have any doubt that this book may be a good value for a developer with a some (limited) programming experience.
Rating: - Pretty good book, not for newbies, though
I'm glad that I forgot to read the customer reviews before ordering this book. When I did I got pretty scared and ran to the first bookshop and bought a beginner C++ book what OOP really is.
I shouldn't have. C++ is a difficult and complex language and obviously this book cannot teach you everything from alpha to omega, but if you are familiar with coding in C, you're not going to have difficulties understanding this book.
Though if you are new to programming I suggest you read a beginners' book on C first, but then go ahead and jump into something more interesting with Visual C++.
|
