Customer Reviews

COM Programming by Example: Using MFC, ActiveX, ATL, ADO, and COM+

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

 

 

This is the worst example of a programming book I have ever purchased. The worst insult was the fact that even though on the cover it says using ActiveX. A whopping four pages are dedicated to ActiveX which is just screen shots of what the MS IDE looks like and an explanation blatantly proclaiming that if the reader wants to learn ActiveX then he or she needs to buy another book. Used car salesman and con artist selling an inferior product use this type of tactic (the Bait and switch). Please heed my warning save your money. Yeah John Swank does it again hopefully he will not do it to you.

The first 100 pages provides a good concise overview of COM programming. It is well written and to the point. However, the remaining section (250 pages) of examples was disappointing. The examples were shells only and had only a summary explanation of each. The same content was copied over and over in all the examples. For example, the "How to register the DLL" explaination, which took almost a page, was copied verbatim in the other examples. Instead of building on a concept, it was simply repeated. 90% of the examples were MFC generated code. It seemed to be more an attempt to fatten up the book rather than to provide content. In short, I think one would be better off with another book that can provide more in-depth examples that one can learn from. Not just the same MFC code again and again.

Caveat Emptor;
Even though Amazon states the cd with the files is included - it is not, and the Publisher CMP books wants to charge $5 for the cd and $5 to ship it! What a rip-off!

This book has helped me tremendously. The style of the book is exactly what I needed. It seems like most of the other books Ive bought and "borrowed" made COM seem like some kind of mystical thing, but this book just tells it like it is. I agree with the last reviewer that the first few examples have a repeatd warning in them about calling an init function, but the rest of the examples were all new and just what I needed.

I purchased his other two books and this one fill sout my library. I love his examples--whenever I have something to do I try his books first