Customer Reviews

Mastering Visual C++ 6

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

 

 

This is one of the best introductory book on Visual C++ (assuming that its reader should have a good understanding on C or C++). I had a very hard time to figure out Visual C++ by myself, reading several introductory books. And even worse I did not getting the clear picture on the difference between C++ and Visual C++. (I believe that the key difference and factor is in its Software Development Environment, for its Code-Generating integrated tool & environment, and its superb Application Wizard). By the way I had over 20 years of various systems and applications experience, along with my teaching experience at various colleges. And this book guides me like a toddler to learn how to walk, one step at a time. And I thank for its presentation which is very easy to follow.

As noted by a few contra-reviews on this book, there are a few places that even the compilation will be failed. And it is very frustrating to check line by line to figure out for type-error or what is missing, or for who made a mistake. For example (Chapter 16, pages 687-694), it will flag a fatal error for CDialog::OnInitDialog(). And one should define a member function: virtual BOOL OnInitDialog(), in CDlgDemoDlg class to refer CDiaglog::OnInitDialog().

I am about a halfway-through for last two months, reading this book line by line and trying by trial-and-error, in my spare times. But my effort is worthy and I give so far A+ for this book and the insightful skill of the author, Michael J. Young. As I scan through the book for its content, I am very impressed with its comprehensiveness on the major key topics, essential in Visual C++. I strongly recommend this book for those learning Visual C++, first time.

Richard K. Min, Dallas, Texas, USA. November 23, 1999.

This book should be read by everyone wanting to learn MFC and C++ programming. It is written in a good tutorial form, with many exciting examples, and a complete introduction to the C++ programming language. The only minus is that it doesn't cover the really advanced sides of MFC and Visual C++. If you want to learn MFC from the novice's point of view, read this book!

This book is a must have for anyone who is starting up with Visual C++ 6.0 I had done almost no MFC programming prior to getting this book, and after reading it cover to cover, I have been able to write basic MFC applications. The book is also good at pointing you to the MS Reference CD locations for additional information that isn't covered. Though not a "bible" per se, it is a must have for Visual C++ beginners (you should know C however).

This book is certainly not the book you would want to read if you want to actually learn VC++. It gives good introduction to the wizards and new tools provided by VC++ 6.0. However, the book does not explain anything regarding the approach to programming using MFC or VC++ in general. Most of the book is filled with code that is automatically generated by the wizards, and that too without much explanation. The reader would keep on typing code and keep on running the applications successfully without knowing what is happening or why the code is being written the way it is written. Certainly not a book for beginners.

Not for beginners as the name suggest.
If you want to learn graphics programming using Visual C++ this
is the right book.
Rich in examples.

This book explains C++ first, then talks about MFC . It gives pretty good explanation about many basic stuffs in Visual C++, but not very deep. The book contains 1400 pages, but more than half is just the complete source code (which is a waste, because many of the source code is generated automatically by VC++). If you just want to get a good introduction to VC++ this might be a good one, but for more reference and in depth explanation this is not the one.

This book has 1400 pages and it uses only about 10 pages to talk about the Visual C++ development environment. It uses around 300 pages talking about C++, from how to create a class. The rest of it is MFC.

I think it's not a good book for professionals or the ones who look for a book about Visual C++ environment.

It might be a good book for beginners, especially some one who even doesn't know C++ yet. I say it might be because I didn't read the section about MFC.

Overall, it disappointed me, but may enlight other people.

A good book for absolute beginners. It deals with the very foundation of C++, and Visual C++. Not recommended for more advanced topics. The threading chapter e.g. tries to protect the reader from the complexity of threads collision, by offering a very limited and expansive (memorywize) solution.

The first few chapters are a great overview of C++, but after that I became quickly disenchanted with the direction of the instruction. The text jumps directly to using wizards to perform all of your MFC needs. The author freely admits that this is his intent which made this book the wrong one for me. Maybe I will continue reading it once I have mastered the connection between the API and the MFC by means of a different book. If wizards are what you seek, this may be a utopic tome for you...

Save you money for something better like teach yourself visual c in 21 days. The book is very big in size but that's it. Not much contents in it. It's written for programmers who don't know how to program in C++ and want to do programming in MFC. My advice to such an audience to grab two good books on for C++ programming and one for MFC. Lots of space is wasted with screen shots and cut-copy-paste of App-wizard generated code. Nothing is written on many important things like database connectivity. GUI is explained in detail but many other books cover even this topic in better and SHORTER way. Save you money instead go for this combination; buy first Robert's Lafore's "Object Oriented Programming using Turbo C++" for learning C++ and then buy "special edition using visual C++ 6" or "teach yourself visual C 6 in 21 days" to learn MFC.