Customer Reviews

C++ Black Book: A Comprehensive Guide to C++ Mastery

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Comprehensive Problem Solver." That's the subtitle on the cover and I think it just about covers my thoughts. The information within is presented in a very understandable fashion and with excelent cross references to other related sections making it an outstanding book for reference. I am an advanced programmer, not a beginner or expert so many of the early topics were very understandable to me while still being advanced enough to be of use to me and not so advanced that I got lost. One caveat however, someone with zero knowledge of basic programming (functions, variables, operators, etc.) might have a little trouble at first until they read on further. The book gets up to speed fast and that might throw some of the brand new programmers for a few chapters.

For those programmers transitioning from C to C++ (myself included) this is a wonderful reference since the author illustrates some of the basic differences between C and C++ even from the first chapter. The author uses only C++ code so you won't get confused by what is old C style code and what is the new (or even old) C++ way.

Each time I thought this book wouldn't get better, it did. I highly recommend this book to programmers moving from C to C++ or to beginning/advanced programmers looking for more depth than a "Teach yourself" book.

The C++ Black Book is one of the best learning books for any future programmer. It does a wonderful job on explaination and description on coding, lines, and everything else in the book. And, unlike some learning books, their are no errors in the coding in this book (as far as I have read their have been no errors: Pg. 465).

If you want to learn C++ and don't have time to learn 2 or 3 other languages, then pick up this book. It does not require you to have previous programming knowledge, so just pick up the book and you're ready to learn...

I have had this book for several years and am just now using it to learn C++. The book has an unusual style in that it repeats itself adding slightly new increments as it goes along. This is great for a beginner or an intermediate programmer with some bad habits. It would drive an expert crazy.
I have written this review because of the put-downs in several other reviews. Those reviewers are looking at the book from the perspective of someone who already knows it all. They obviously don't feel that they needed this book and perhaps they don't. I did and still do need the simplicity and patience exhibited by this author as I am trying to learn this difficult language without the help of a teacher or even mentor to answer questions. For this purpose the book is the best I have seen and I have half a dozen others.

Being one of the best ANSI / ISO C++ books I have ever read, Holzner will cover everything about C++ with great detail. The format of this book is smooth to follow, showing you how to code efficiently and properly. The author describes the examples in the book line by line, explaining every section of the code. Beginning programmers, even with little or no experience, will be amazed at how effortlessly they can learn from this Black Book. As for any serious programmer, I would describe Holzner's work as the perfect reference for C++. Each topic presented will gradually help you to become closer to a programming expert.

I was very disappointed with this book because of the severe lack of actual information. Each chapter is divided into an two sections. I think one is supposedly to give an overview and the other to discuss the topic. Unfortunately, the second section does little more that repeat the cursory and unclear contents of the first section, without adding any real information. Everything seems to be covered, but even after actually reading it page by page, I gained only questions. The data structures and different objects are "discussed" but that discussion consists of "you can <insert some mysterious task> in C++" without telling you why you might want to do so or giving helpful examples. Then, forty pages later, the same "discussion" is presented, as if only to frustrate the reader.

In simple words,This book rocks ....

It Covers everything including STL.The concept of Classes is clearly explained through appropriate examples.
Though one may feel the editing is bad,it actually gives you the chance to revise the concepts you already studied, while going through the chapter.
so i think the editor did a good job.
It's certainly one of the best books i've read on C++.

I did a lot of research before buying this, and a lot of it was based on Amazon customer reviews. Unfortunately, buying this book was a mistake! I can't say it is a bad book, because it isn't BAD... But I was thoroughly disappointed with it.

It has an unusual structure where it first introduces the concepts of the chapter, and then it has an 'immediate solutions' section at the end of each chapter where the author demonstrates what you've already learned. This book could be half as thick!

Also, I found it to be frustrating as a reference book. Very few books can be a good reference as well as teach, though, so I didn't take away many points for that shortcoming.

The other problem, is that many techniques are really glossed over. I found myself having to re-read the passages over and over trying to figure out for myself how something worked. I enjoy in-depth technical explanations for the things that I learn, and they were hard to find in this book. Many things should have been explained more instead of simply REPEATED!

In summary, I would not recommend this book to ANYONE. I am a fairly advanced programmer, but somehow never learned C or C++ before I got this book. I felt that the book did a decent job at teaching me the concepts and syntax, but overall I did not feel confident with what I learned in this book. I wish I could recommend an alternative, but unfortunately I don't know of any good C++ books!

This is an excellent book. I had the book for a long time already, but only started yesterday. I used to find it complicated. A few days ago I had a plan for a program, but I just didn't have knowledge of the right language, which is C++.
The book briefly explains all concepts in the first chapter so the following chapters are easier to understand. The activities make you write simple programs which explains the ideas in an easy-to-understand way. At the end of a chapter the things are repeated to review you knowledge so you can continue to the next chapter easily. Another great thing is that the examples given have highlights in the new or important parts in the examples, so you can easily see what's new and what you should remember.

The people that previously wrote reviews mentioning the repeating structure of the book are very impatient people. I'm done with the first chapter, and the basics are here. I've just started the second chapter, and things are pretty clear.
It helps to first read the intro of the chapter, then do the activities, and then read it again for review without doing the activities.

I have some tips for people to slide into the book a little easier:
1* Download a free program called Just BASIC. (www.justbasic.com)
It's a dialect of the easiest language there is: BASIC. The program comes with a free editor, compiler, and with a free tutorial to explain the language. I did the first few tutorials to get to know the basic basics of programming. It realy helps in learning any other language.
2* Use Bloodshed Dev-C++ to write the programs. It's a lot easier. The book uses Borland 5 for examples, but Dev-C++ is easier and a lot better. It's free, comes with a handy editor and compiler.
3* As with any language, after reading the book you should do some tutorials on the web. It's necessary but it makes life so much easier.

Started out with this book to improve my BrainBench score beyond 3. It really helped to improve my fundamentals which you may not get in the classroom.

The introductory explanation of STL and templates also helped in improving my template coding abilities. For more advance programming, Exceptional C++ by Sutter and C++ Programming by Bjarne Stroustrup are recommended. You can also throw in Scott Meyers book for support. Good references and code are also got from CUJ.

in some parts this book is very good, but is let down with some poor examples. When describing structures the author uses a definition, names the call and the instance all the same:

struct structure {...}structure1;

but in others he does it well

struct person {} ralph

much easier to follow why not do that throughout Steven (if you are reading this)

you can waste a lot of time just figuring out what is going on. It's thick because very exmaple is repeated 20 times.

I agree with another review also, the depth is sometime lacking in places but in others it just uses concepts not explained at all.

if he cleans up the examples the book is ok, I am learning and it is difficult to know how it compares as it cost me 80 bucks and I can't afford another book so I guess I'll continue.