Customer Reviews

Learn Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Now

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I loved this book. I am a professional Visual Basic Programmer, and want to expand to C++. I am a hands on kind of learner and enjoyed the step by step tutorial of the new environment. I don't understand why people who are C++ programmers for 5 years are even reading this book. It is a beginner's hands on tutorial. It isn't meant as a reference, and it requires a knowledge of simple programming skills. It says this right off the bat.

To me, programming in C++ with MFC is the most difficult subject I've yet tried so far. To understand this monster, I needed something that clearly explains why things are done in such way. I truly appreciated the author's approach to logically organize chapters along with detailed explanation, which allowed me to clearly focused on the subject throughout the book. For a novice programmer like myself, this book offers an excellent ways to establish solid understanding in C++ with MFC.

If you're new to C++, do not start with this book. Get a book on C++ by Robert Lafore or Tom Swan first and become an expert (Lafore & Swan are both 10 star authors on C++). Then, if you buy Sphar's book, take his advise and skip chapters 1-5, which are the C++ tutorials (start off in ch. 6). Don't waste your time trying to learn C++ with this book. Chapter 6 starts on the goodies of Windows programming w/Visual C++ (the MFC, ApppWizard, etc.).

Chuck Sphars 'Learn Visual C++ 6.0 Now' reminds me of an ad for a local university. Two students are talking in class. The first notes how confused the lecture is and hopes the text will help her pass the course. The second student replies that he has read the book and was in class in hopes that the lecture would help him pass the class.

Sphars book starts with a short introduction in C++. As I have written C/C++ for 5 years I skimed over this. However, for a person new to C/C++ it would not provide the depth of background required to write programs. The author then gets into the use of Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC), the major topic of the book. The books presentation centers on a single large example built in stages. Its major weakness is the continual use of references to the C++ help system (which are of almost no help for learners and the reason I purchased this book) and to future sections in the book ('I will talk about that in the next section or chapter or...'). The way the book is written the author appears to need to tell the reader multiple things at once, each of which depend on the other (you need to know 'A' to understand 'B' which in turn assumes you already know 'A').

The book needs a major rewrite of the logic of its presentation of subject matter. It needs to include more material about MFC and to do so in a more logical manner. It also needs to explain what the pull down menu items, wizards, and icons mean and do and how to use them (so you can do the example program).

For those who have had exposure to C++ but are not experts, and who need to learn Visual C++, this book would be a good choice. The book emphasizes the Microsoft Foundation Classes, since it is a Microsoft Press book, and the author includes more background material in C++ for those who need it. But lest the reader get bogged down in the intricacies of C++ , the author includes an introduction to Visual C++ in the first chapter of the book. It is assumed, naturally, that the reader will be in front of a computer with Visual Studio open while reading the book, and inputing code or navigating in it as the author requests in the book. Readers who intend to program business applications in C++ will find the book very useful. At the present time, scientific programming in C++ is on the rise, and even though Visual C++ and its GUI environment may be overkill for these applications, this situation is changing, especially in areas such as computational biology and financial engineering. Readers in these fields are frequently faced with creating GUI environments for their applications, and so Visual C++ can be of help in this regard.

Chapters 2-5 are an overview of C++ and object-oriented programming and can be skipped by readers who already have the necessary background. The material is pretty standard, and the author gives suggestions on how to program more efficiently in C++. Readers without any knowledge at all of C++ might find the reading somewhat difficult, as the author does not give an in-depth presentation of the relevant concepts in C++. A fairly good discussion of the scoping rules in C++ is given, along with pointers, MFC pointer conventions, classes, etc.

The author begins in chapter 6 to discuss the main goal of the book, which is to introduce the reader to Windows programming using the Microsoft Foundation Class Library. He emphasizes first the role of message passing via the message handlers, and the use of the MFC to write handler functions instead of window procedures to process window messages. The author is aware of the difficulty in learning the MFC and its consequent applications to Windows programming, and so he spends a fair amount of time looking at the MFC class hierarchy. The AppWizard is used early on to perform elementary coding examples. The author discusses the document/view architecture in terms of the separation of the data from how it is used; this being done with the class Cdocument for holding the data, and CView for viewing the data. This is an approach that characterizes the object-oriented origins of the MFC. Those readers who have programmed Windows applications using C will notice the absence of the WinMain function, this being done automatically by the MFC. The author summarizes the relationships between the MFC and the Win32 API for this kind of reader. this being done automatically by the MFC. The author summarizes the relationships between the MFC and the Win32 API for this kind of reader.

The next several chapters consider the use of the AppWizard and the MFC to a drawing application. Those interested in developing sophisticated scientific or financial applications might find this dull reading, but with some amount of patience one can get through it. In addition, the author introduces the Visual C++ debugger, and so for this reason alone the reading of these chapters might be profitable for such a reader. Also, the design of a Visual C++ application that contains a large amount of graphs will require knowledge of the tools discussed here.

The last part of the book concentrates on various ancillary topics in MFC that the author felt were necessary to use it more proficiently. The author includes a useful diagram of the MFC view class hierarchy in this regard. He also discusses the serialization of objects, of crucial importance to those who are needing persistence in their applications, particulary in Web-based applications and database programming. The most useful discussions for me in this part were the chapters on dialog boxes, controls, and toolbars

This book is written like a tutorial, not as a reference. If you're looking for a reference book, find something else. It leads you step by step through each programming concept through one large example program that spans the whole book. Therefore, if you try to just read about one concept, you find yourself looking at terms of the unfamiliar example. But if you read straight through like a tutorial, it does a decent job of teaching VC++ interface, Wizards, OOP, MFC, etc.

Beware of books written by technical document writers who fancy themselves authors. Mr. Sphar may have a handle on Visual C++, but has no talent for logical progression. The first 6 or so chapters of the book are especially disappointing, as much of the time is spent mentioning a topic and then explaining that the topic will be explained in later chapters of the book <whew!> or is covered in the Visual C++ help files, and will NOT be covered in the book! The only valuable information I found was in Sphar's recommendation that I obtain the C++ Primer by Stan Lippman. My advice: skip Sphar, buy Lippman

I have really liked the way the author Chuck Sphar actually goes about creating the MyDraw Application right from scratch. The first 200 pages of the book teach C++, and the other 500 teach VC++, concentrating on MFC. A real good book to buy.

This book is not very easy to follow. The author seems quite unable to sustain one train of thought for any length of time. He seems to jump from topic to topic and back again without fully covering any of them. There are lots of examples, but very little discription of what they are or why you would use them. This is not a book that I would reccomend to anyone trying to learn Visual C++.

I picked up this book as a average C and JAVA programmer looking to move onto C++ and the windows platform. I even have some C++ background.

I was disapointed to say the least. The author never gives a clear description of how different sections interact, instead providing steps in such tiny increments that the broad picture never emerges. I followed along step by step and still have no clear understanding of how C++ programming works in windows.

I would agree with the majority of other reviewers. This book is simply not useful for learning C++ nor does it contain enough information to make a good resource.