Customer Reviews

Learn the MFC C++ Classes : Using Microsoft Visual C++ 4, Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5, Symantec C++ 7, and Borland C++ 5

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

 

 

Miss Wodtkes book does not cover the complete MFC, that is true, there is no mention of the OLE, Synchronisation and Internet classes but then this is the book which fresh MFC programmers go to, before going to Jeff Prosise or a David Kruglinsky. This is the book which which says that it covers certain things( at the back of the cover though) and does just that, definitely there are no stories for entertaining the reader. The earlier reviews are filled with her ex-students who are totally biased( what Miss Wodtke does in her classes is not the topic under review). The book has quite a few Typo errors, I am sure Miss Wodtke agrees. All the Example programs provided in the books compile and Run well on Windows95( VC 4.2 as well as 5). The readers are advised to go through the chapter on the IDE where the author has told users what to do in the settings. The book is not a course on Exception handling (Even the best books don't touch this in their programs, the underlying wrapped API's are supposed to handle them), All the most frequently used classes and functions of the MFC(the common controls is a highlight here), the tick-tack example with complete splitter is one of the fastest for the beginner to get into real programming. The The Document-View Architecture covered is one of the best for a beginner, The book is available for a heavily discounted price in India(It is definitely worth the price). Unfortunately, this is a book which almost everyone has gone through but feels ashamed to admit(ofcourse, there are books which readers don't even bother to lay their hands on).Some readers would rather show that they grasped everything from the bigger books at the first go(so much for vanity!!!).

This book can in no way teach any one about developing professional level applications. It is rather focused at familiarizing the readers with conepts at a very elementry level. I dont think any professional programmer in the world would think of developing robust and efficient application by reading such elementry book. Miss Wodtke has been very successful in writing this book to teach the ABC's of MFC and windows applications to the very beginners of windows programming. The good thing about this book is that it is not time consuming at all. Person with basic knowledge can read this book in just a week and get the flavour of fundamental concepts in a very simple effective way. The clarity and flow of the book is very well paced. I would strongly recomend this book before turning to Jeff Prosis,Mike Blaszczak or Kruglinski.

FOR ME, THIS IS THE BEST BOOK ABOUT MFC..

READING THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS I HAD LEARNED MORE THAN READING TEN CHAPTERS OF OTHERS BOOKS.

THE AUTHOR'S IDEA, "ONE-IDEA-AT-A-TIME" IT'S THE BEST WAY TO GO FAST. AND NOW, I'M REALLY GOING FAST LEARNING MFC.

OF COURSE THE BOOK NEEDS UPDATING TO VISUAL C++ 6.0, BUT IT'S VERY HELPFUL EVEN WITHOUT UPDATING.

I HOPE MS. SHIRLEY WODTKE WRITE MORE BOOKS ABOUT MFC, OR WINDOWS PROGRAMMING IN GENERAL. I LIKE HER STYLE OF WRITING.

SHE EXPLAINS VERY CLEARLY DIFFICULT CONCEPTS.

EDUARDO
SPAIN

I'm a beginner in MFC, but I have big experience in otber fields about programming.

I think it's a very good book, at least for beginners in MFC.
I have run most of the examples and all them goes fine.
Even those apparently wrong !.

For example, in chapter 1, the example MyApp1, it's OK, because it's possible and safe to call CFrameWnd::Create() from the constructor of a derived class of CFrameWnd!.
MSDN documentation doesn't say that it's not possible.
And the Debugger confirm that !
I mention this to answer one of the bad reviews I read.

I'm studying the book with Visual C++ 6.0.
Of course, the book needs updating.

I like the idea of the author, one-idea-at-time. It's the best way to go fast !.

I hope Ms. Shirley Wodtke have time to update the book

Thank your for the book!.
Eduardo
Spain

Learn the MFC C++ Classes does exactly what it claims to do-- it is beginners book on MFC. I only had a little bit of understanding of MFC, but Ms Wodtke's book helped me to understand the basic foundation classes so much better. She has a very simple approach. I appreciate this and found her book to be very valuable in learning more about the library of MFC classes. I now feel comfortable editing the code.

It is sad to see that some of her students are frustrated by the fact that they cannot grasp the basic concepts of MFC in Wodtke's book. They seem to be pretty upset by this. I have read Prosises and Kruglinski's books, and if you cannot understand Wodtke's book then I don't think that these books will make it any clearer.

I've always wanted to get to grips with VC++/MFC (and Windows programming in general), but have each time managed to get derailed just because of the ridiculous approach most books take to get you started - with AppWizard generated code and 'to-do' lists. I thought I could write more-than-adequate code in C++, and I found it deeply distressing that I just couldn't get the hang of MFC - I never felt the generated code was 'mine' - and I didn't know what I could delete, what I could amend - what each part of the program was responsible for - I'd just end up cursing Microsoft for coming out with such a messy library and such a lousy programming model. Enter Shirley Wodtke's book - and life is good again ! Okay so it doesn't have the level of detail of say Kruglinski, but thats what was called for. That said, I hope the next edition covers a little bit of Multithreaded programming and some network programming.

I couldn't agree more strongly with the other reviews I've seen of this book and the class. It's unfortunate that UC Berkeley Extension has chosen to use Ms. Wodtke's teaching services where she forces her students to purchase this 3rd rate programming book. Her classes are as disorganized and as flawed as the book; many of the examples don't compile or have other errors and so I ended up spending time tracking down problems. I cannot state strongly enough: DONT BUY THIS BOOK AND DONT TAKE HER CLASS, it would be a waste of money. She counts attendence in the class as half of the grade (perhaps she should be teaching kindergarten instead of college level classes). She has very little knowledge of her subject and is unable to answer even the simplest questions about C++ and MFC. This is the only book I've bought that has no redeeming value and is going out with the recycling.

This book is an utter disaster. I purchased this book directly from Ms. Wodtke while taking her class through the UC Berkeley Extension. She knows very little about programming, and I dropped out of the class after the fourth of ten lectures because I was wasting my time and was learning how to write programs the wrong way. The book covers an outdated version of Visual C++ and talks very little about writing programs using the Visual C++ development tools. Most of the book/class focuses on writing programs using a two class system, while App Wizard and most commercial applications use the 4 class document view system.

The program examples have bugs in them which blow up in NT or when compiled in debug mode. Ms Wodtke doesn't understand why Microsoft uses a two phase construction system in MFC, and calls the create() functions from within the constructors of the derived classes, rather than in the OnCreate() virtual functions that MFC provides. She never checks for error conditions in her programs...she has no understanding of the memory leak and resource leak reprocussions, let alone the problems of writing code that doesn't give the user any information when it crashes. Her C++ programming styles are very sloppy and dangerous, and could never be used in quality commercial software.

In addition, the book has other glaring errors. She repeatedly says 24 bits per pixel gives you 6 million colors (it should be 16 million colors), and mentions that Windows NT came out after Windows 95 (which is not true).

This book will teach you very sloppy programming styles and will show you how to get a bug riddled MFC app up and limping without giving you an in depth understanding of how MFC works. In the back of the book, the publisher solicits the readers to become authors for Wordware publishing. Because their screening process for book authors is obviously weak, I'd avoid buying any book from this publisher. The only interesting knowledge that I gained from this book is that I now know where recycled toilet paper comes from.

I actually used this book in a class taught by Ms. Wodtke. Not only was she unable to answer questions within the scope of the material, but the ones she did answer were wrong. Her book is a direct translation of these worthless lectures. Not only is the text riddled with typos, the examples (if they don't throw an exception) are incompatible with Windows NT 4.0. You can't expect to learn anything practical when the bulk of your time is spent second guessing and correcting her sloppy work. Avoid this one like the plague.

This book is a mess. It reminds me of when a professor who knows his or her material but doesn't know how to teach lectures.

It is organized in a somewhat illogical way. It's intended audience is a dos programmer who wants to make the jump to windows.

However, its org. style completely forgets that DOS programmers would likely have working programs that they would want to throw a GUI on. Instead of showing how to add graphical elements to their programs, Wodtke goes on for two chapters about how to draw graphics in a window. By the time she comes back off of her fantastical mystical journey, so many concepts are buried that it makes the book close to worthless.