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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
C++ for Computational Applications, January 22, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: C++ and Object-Oriented Numeric Computing for Scientists and Engineers (Hardcover)
As promised in the preface, the book consists of three parts. The first introduces the basics of C++ that are comparable to other programming languages, the second part introduces the features that make C++ special (like classes, inheritance, etc.), and the third part contains a substantial application of the concepts introduced before. The distinguishing feature of this book from other C++ books is that it is written for mathematicians, scientists, and engineers interested in computation. That means that attention is paid from the beginning to important issues like representation of double variables and computational performance of C++ compared to other languages, and, particularly in the third part, the very substantive example of iterative methods for matrices in a variety of storage formats is shown. All this does not mean that one has to have background in numerical methods, as the examples themselves are elementary; the book is still first and foremost a book about C++. For students new to programming in a source code language, the first four chapters should give enough advice to get started. But on the other hand, one does not have to start reading at the beginning, I found, if one is already familiar with the basics of Part 1! Programmers experienced in C may want to start right in Part 2, as I have done. That is an important feature of a text that claims to be a reference text as well as an introduction. The snippets of code are very well-presented and have clearly been carefully chosen and debugged, while some passages of the text could have been written more smoothly. In summary, this is the best introduction to C++ for individuals interested in computations, that I am aware of.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Must-Have for Scientists & Engineers Interested in C++, January 16, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: C++ and Object-Oriented Numeric Computing for Scientists and Engineers (Hardcover)
This is probably the best C++ book on the market for scientists and engineers. Yang's book rivals, yet complements Barton & Nackmann: whereas B&N provide a good overview of "big picture" design issues (but provide few example problems), Yang provides many useful examples of problems relevant to scientists (natural sciences, not computer science!) and engineers (not computer engineers!), such as linear algebra, polynomial interpolation, numerical integration, and finite differences. The usefulness of Yang's contribution is not so much in providing the numerical methods (which can be found in standard texts), but in providing examples of designs of class hierarchies and object-oriented strategies for solving numerical problems. Yang also provides an excellent discussion of performance issues, and demonstrates a number of strategies (using function objects and/or templates) for making C++ code as efficient as C or Fortran. The book is concise, yet complete in its coverage of C++, compliant with ISO/ANSI, and includes the latest features such as templates, namespaces, and the STL. I cannot comment on how well the book works as a first book in C++, but it does start at the "beginning", and the author is using it as a textbook in an undergarduate level C++ course. The writing style is clear, making it easy to follow even complex concepts. My only complaint is that the book is biased towards mathematical methods. I would have liked to see examples of object-oriented methods for simulation of physical "objects" and phenomena; similarly, the omission of a discussion of how to best represent "global" physical constants (global variables vs encapsulation in namespaces or classes, etc) was surprising. Bottom line: if you are a scientist or engineer interested in using C++ and OOP in your work, Yang's book is the only book other than Barton & Nackmann worth buying. I hope Yang goes on to write "Numerical Recipes in C++"!
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very good book on C++, March 23, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: C++ and Object-Oriented Numeric Computing for Scientists and Engineers (Hardcover)
This is a very well-written book on C++. It has less than 500 pages, but contains almost everything a C++ programmer needs to know. It provides a comprephensive coverage, concrete examples, and code snippets -- from C++ basics to its standard libraries, and to many advanced techniques such as deferred evaluation for operator overloading, expression templates, template metaprograms, and replacing certain virtual functions by static polymorphism (for efficiency reasons ). I have not seen these techiques in other C++ books I have read, including the most authoritative ones, where operator overloading and templates are used in straightforward ways. The author even gives a very good explanation on pointers, which I found very usefull in my signal and image processing project, where two and three dimensional arrays have to be dynamically allocated (using double and triple pointers). I strongly recommend this book to any C++ programmer who want intellectual stimulation and a deeper understanding of advanced C++ techniques.
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