Customer Reviews

Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2008

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Just read an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++, where he studiously avoided talking about C# as much as possible. Understandable, perhaps - in my opinion most (not all, but most) programming projects for Windows systems would benefit greatly from using C# instead of C++.

Not that the above observation has anything to do with "Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2008"; I just felt the urge to pass along that opinion in case the reader of this review has not yet decided whether to start learning C++ or C#.

For those who are interested in learning C++ for use with Windows, I can recommend this book. It is well written and covers everything you need to know to get started. In fact, at 1356 pages (not 1392, as currently listed at Amazon) it covers much more than most people need to know.

In Visual Studio 2005, and continuing in Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft introduced a new dialect of C++ called C++/CLI. The great advantage of C++/CLI is that it allows you to integrate "managed" programming (programs that run on the .Net Framework) and "unmanaged" or "native" programming. This is a unique ability of C++/CLI, and for this kind of programs C++/CLI can run circles around C#.

Ivor Horton's book provides a good introduction to C++/CLI, with most chapters being divided into two parts; the first part about classical (ANSI/ISO) C++ and the second part about C++/CLI. However, as a beginner's book, it does not get into the really exciting managed/unmanaged "interop" parts of C++/CLI. For that you will need a more advanced book, for example Expert Visual C++/CLI: .NET for Visual C++ Programmers (Expert's Voice in .Net) - and some experience in creating both managed and unmanaged programs.

On the other hand, if C++/CLI is of no interest to you, then you can easily ignore those parts of the book.

Turning to more general comments, this book is well written and does a good job of describing all of the (sometimes messy) details about C++. There are many programming examples, all meticulously explained. The source code for the examples is available on the publisher's web site. There is even an online service - at one point I mistakenly thought I'd found a bug in one of the examples and I reported it as errata. In response I received a kind message from Mr. Horton himself telling me why I was wrong.

I liked the occasionally humorous tone of the book too, and was especially intrigued by Mr. Horton's reference to a book called "Paneless Programming" from 1981.

There are no major negative aspects, but I did find the fairly large number of typos somewhat irritating. Another surprising experience was that the index, although huge at 38 pages, was missing obvious entries such as "enum" and "typedef". Occasionally material was presented in a slightly illogical way, being (prematurely?) mentioned briefly in one chapter and then finally described properly in a later chapter.

As mentioned by other reviewers, in order to do the MFC parts of the book you need to have access to one of the non-free versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

This is a very good introductory book about C++ and C++/CLI for Visual Studio 2008.

Rennie Petersen

I have used Ivor Horton's books on Visual C++ since Beginning Visual C++ 4 and this latest book conforms to the very high standard set by the previous books.

First of all, the book is written for the IDE(s) provided and not the other way round. This book covers the ISO/ANSI standard C++ and the Microsoft extension C++/CLI, together with the Standard Template Library, in the first 11 chapters. Windows Programming is introduced in Chapter 12 and covers both MFC and Windows Forms.

Now, if you want to go down the traditional game Programming route, then Win32 and Standard C++ is what you will need, together with DirectX or OpenGL at a later stage. The book covers all the C++ you will need for that. However, should you want something for business applications, together with a graphics capability and a rich GUI, then that is covered also with Windows Forms and, although I have never used it, presumably Visual Studio Express is perfectly adequate for this exercise.

A problem emerges if you have used and want to continue using MFC, since these classes are not part of the Express version. Presumably, Microsoft considered that those who would want to use MFC have done so in previous versions of Visual Studio and would simply upgrade to, at least, the 2008 Standard version.

The fact remains, however, that this book covers Windows Forms, and all that you could do with the MFC can be done as well, if not a lot better, with Forms. And since the Express version contains Windows Forms, it is difficult to imagine there being any problem with reaching project objectives.

Having said that, I would like to conclude by saying that this is a truly excellent work, and it is very difficult to see how this beginning text could be improved upon, even by Wrox standards.

"Beginning Visual C++" is a book divided into two main components. The first half of the book is dedicated to teaching the reader about ANSI C++, that is standardized C++ with no Microsoft specific features. The second part of the book is dedicated to Microsoft specific additions to the language. Here the author shows the user how to use the Microsoft Foundation Classes as well as programming with the .NET framework.

Overall the book is well written and clear to understand. As the title indicates it is pitched at the beginner market. However, its primary flaw is that it tries to deliver too much for a single text. With plenty of excellent ANSI C++ references on the market, it is a mystery to me as to why the author tries to cram two books into the one volume. The end result is that both sections of the book do not go into as much detail as they could.

ANSI C++ is currently undergoing a very major revision and the standard will soon include regular expressions, smart pointers, hash tables and random number generators. These are not by any means "advanced" features of the language and I feel that any C++ book written from 2008 onwards should include at least a brief reference to what will shortly become a core component of the language. The MFC component feels similarly dated in that it does not include coverage of ribbon elements, docking toolbars, tabbed documents and so forth.

I have not read any of the previous "Beginning Visual C++" volumes by Horton but it feels as if he has simply tacked on small, incremental changes as each new release of Visual C++ has come out rather than making the broad sweeping changes necessary to do justice to some of the new feature sets discussed above. Nonetheless I would still recommend the purchase of this book for beginners who have absolutely so C++ experience at all.

I won't go into detail here. The other reviewers have done a good job in that regard. Suffice it to say that this is an extremely good book, very well written. Horton explains things very well, clear and logical. I especially like, for example, his discussion of references, something which other authors seem unable to explain clearly. I've been following his step by step examples for using MFC, and they work well. Every step is presented in detail. Just do as your told and it works!

I do have one significant criticism. The book is almost 1400 pages long, and that is just too long to be convenient to handle. I would have preferred to have it be in the form of two volumes, Volume 1 being devoted to the C++ language and Volume 2 being devoted to the applications. I just find it to be physically awkward to read a 1400-page book.

Addendum as of 14 Feb 2010:

I have been using this book extensively now, and I'd like to add to my previous comments. This book covers a number of topics, the Integrated Development Environment(IDE), the C++ language, the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and the Common Language Runtime (CLR) for creating programs to run in the Windows environment. Each one of these topics is huge. Horton tackles the problem with a number of examples, the emphasis being on the development of a program called Sketcher for drawing objects on the screen. He devoted Chapters 13 through 19 to this program. He develops two versions of Sketcher, one illustrating the use of the MFC and the other the use of the CLR, the emphasis being heavily on the MFC. I developed the MFC version. The final version of Sketcher is a complicated program.

If you've ever followed a book to develop a program, you know that you will have bugs your program, and that it's important when you're trying to fix those bugs to be able to have confidence that the author's instructions are OK. I can tell you with certainty that you can count on Horton's being correct. If you truly follow his instructions, step by step as he describes, your version of Sketcher will compile and run OK. I recommend that, after you successfully complete the version in each chapter, you save it as something like SketcherCh13, SketcherCh14, etc. so that you'll have a good starting point for trying to sort out where you went wrong in each chapter. It is an amazing book.

I am, by no means now an accomplished Windows programmer. However, I am ready to start crawling on my own. I stand by by earlier comments.

Wrox books generally turn me off, but this is one of those rare exceptions: the content is extremely well organized and clearly written.

Can't give it 5 stars though, as there is little information on how to manage the memory layout of complex object hierarchies: eg pros and cons of different ways to embed subobjects (eg. should I use a pointer, reference, or an array to define a member variable?) and how to reclaim memory etc. Granted, this is a beginner's book, but IMO, a solid understanding of memory layout is essential for beginners. Too many people (esp in the C# and Java world) jump into coding for a large set of classes without fully understanding how different objects work together at runtime.

I bought this book not to learn C++ but to review it. My primary goal was to become more involved with Windows programming ( the last few chapters of this book dive into that). In college I was always taught just the language, not how to implement Windows GUI's and more.

The first half of this book discusses C++ from begining to end. There were many things that I remembered and understood more after reading the first half. It is very very well written. I speed through the first half of this book within days; it just flowed so well.

Then I get to the second part of the book, which essentially describes how to program in a Windows OS environment. The author tried to explain how all the features work from the ground level instead of just stating how to use them. I felt like I needed a computer science degree to understand this part of the book. Later on, I gave up reading it and moved on to other languages.

The book is very well written, just the last part is so confusing. I'm an EE that has taken several different programming based classes including assembly, vhdl, c, c++, and java.

I have a number of "beginner" books on C++, It seems like the advanced programmers who write these books have all forgotten how to state ideas in simple terms that beginners can grasp easily. That being said, this book is written in a fairly straightforward manner. In my opinion this is one of the best(if not the best) book for total beginners.

I am currently going through this book. I own a copy of C++ Primer Plus by Stephen Prata, but I also bought this book because I literally had no idea where to begin. For an absolute beginners who is starting all by herself (like me), often the simplest things would not come naturally (ex. you can use a program called Visual Studio to build computer programs). The step-by-step screen captures and line-by-line explanations in this book are very helpful and encouraging.
That said, I should say this book is not as well-written and organized as the Prata book - it does not have the same level of succinctness and clarity. In some parts the author tries to explain too much too early/at once and the flow gets slightly scrambled. The writing feels wordy sometimes - I felt the same amount of information could be delivered in 2/3 amount of writing.
I would still recommend this book to any newbie like me. This book is like a friendly and resourceful neighbor who may be kinda chatty. You will ultimately get what you needed (and some more) and won't feel intimidated or overwhelmed on the way.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn how to program C++ real-time applications in windows using MFC (C++ is the choice for speed over .NET).
Surprisingly there are very few books on MFC C++ programming that are less than 8 years old and these are a bit out of date (Microsoft made updates to MFC in Visual Studio 2008).
My problem is that the book tries to cover programming using C++ and C++(.NET) in the same book.
I don't really care about .NET at the moment. (I skipped the .NET parts because it's like learning two foreign languages at time, confusing)
I wished the author would have focused on the C++ part more because there aren't any good books out there on the subject.
The beginning sections of the book have very good depth, but it seems like the book peters off near the end, probably due to lack of space.
As Microsoft pushes .NET there is still a need for native programming for applications that require speed.
Overall the book was well written. If the author had two books, one for C++ and one for C++(.NET) then those books would be really good.
I think the book is still worth purchasing because:
1) The initial section on basic C++ programming is one of the best I've seen. (very well written and concise.)
2) The book really did help me understand how to use Visual Studio 2008 through it's examples.
3) I did gain a basic understanding about programming GUI's in MFC.
Recently I purchased Foundations of Qt® Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source) and was really impressed by how easy it is to program native C++ programs in Qt. I've gotten much further in a shorter period of time than with MFC. There is even a Visual Studio 2008 plugin that allows you to program Qt in VS.

Jeff

Just bought the book and I admit I've only read to the introduction, but I have grave reservations about the book already. What bothers me, and I think maybe all beginners that are thinking about buying the book should know, is the author says the free edition of visual 2008 C++, the Express Edition is NOT sufficient to use with the book. You need at least the $300 to $800 standard version from Microsoft or professional version. I know a lot of people that buy these books are programmers and have access to the commerical versions of software, but, most students that are learning aren't making money from programming, they are only trying to learn and don't have the money to purchase that kind of software. I think books that claim to be beginning should at least state what is needed in order to use the book. I have a basic knowledge of ANSI C++ and a review will be good, but I feel I may have wasted my money on this book to learn Windows programming, because I can't spend that much money on software just to learn.