Customer Reviews

Engineering Problem Solving with C++

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

 

 

As a computer science student who changed majors to computer engineering, this was one of the best programming books that I've read in college. It actually teaches you problem solving in a very straightforward manner. Not without flaws though, since there are quite a few typos and errors in the code of the programs in the book; however, everyone with at least some basic understanding of computer programming should be able to figure out what is wrong and fix them quite easily.

With the help of this book I was able to apply C++ to a lot of common problems encountered throughout all engineering fields; from statistics to simple physics and math problems. After taking the class, in which this book was used, this book has become one of my main references.

As a basic text book for engineering students not expecting to do any C++ programming or development, this book serves the reader. But...I expect anyone taking C++ in any engineering course is bound to do some real programming in C++. If the authors, Etter/Ingber, felt that the coverage of material (engineering problems) combined with the programming examples is a way to teach programming then I don't believe this book works. It is of some use in introducing students to programming concepts in a general sense.

Topical depth for this book; whether it is 'Grand Challenges', general engineering, or C++ programming, there is not a lot to sink your teeth into. I am also afraid that the authors did not focus on the language sufficiently and could misled students with respect to effective and efficient C++ programming. Programming examples provided are best defined as 'What to do if you have to quickly write a short book on engineering with a minor emphasis on C++!' effort.

Pluses:
Simple, easy to follow introduction for junior college or 1st year university students that are not planning to use programming languages as a career tool.

Well structured material, nice layout and use of text book document conventions along with a comprehensive summary for each capture.

Minuses:
Poor use of C++ in demonstration of engineering problems, and does not provide a constructive foundation at any level for C++ based programming.

I got this book for my programming class. It was helpful and it started at the beginning with basic code and gradually got harder as the chapters went on with more complex code. There are a good number of examples they give during each chapter and the code has comments in it to tell you what they are doing. They then explain the code briefly in a paragraph, by stating the new stuff shown. They also have pratice problems with the answers at the back. Its good to use as an source of examples and how to use functions. But i think the best way to learn programming is to actually do it, but as i said, this is a good source of explanation for functions and good source of examples for functions.

This book seems like a lot more of sample reference code than anything else. It really doesn't teach very well how to do stuff but it does have a lot of code examples.