Customer Reviews

Problem Solving, Abstraction, and Design Using C++ (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

In my opinion, this book is below average. According to the chapters it covers, this should be a book for beginners at programming. But by reading the book, only non-beginners would be able to follow all the examples. Rather than rely on the feedback of one person, I will give you the feedback of the students that I taught with this book. Most students beginning a programming class will have a hard time understanding this book that assumes that you already know a lot about math and logic. When I tried assigning homework from this book, most of my students had problems just understanding what the math and logic of the problem would require, and couldn't concentrate on the programming concepts. There are quite a number of inaccuracies in it as well, such as it's miscalling preprocessor directives a compiler directive. It also calls an array a data type which it is not, it is a data structure. It also calls the exponent of a scientific notation a characteristic. That term is only used in the natural science community. Even the IEEE standard for floating-point numbers calls it exponent and not characteristic. One of its first examples starts with a standard input statement without prompting the user with what input the program expects. These little annoying problems with this book have caused me to abandon it all together. I would much rather recommend Diane Zak's Fundamentals of Programming in C++ if you are a beginner to programming.

This book was required for a C++ course I attended at the local community college. I had been doing some minor programming in other languages but felt I needed at solid foundation in C++. This book would have been a difficult place to start. However, thanks to a talented and very patient instructor, the entire class did well. I would have given at least a four star rating but this Addison/Wesley paperback was very poorly published. Pages fell out daily throughout the semester. Have some tape and glue handy.

I'm using this for COSC 1436, introductory C++. I had coincidentally picked up the 3rd edition of this book from a used bookstore last year for 5 bucks just for curiosities sake. There is almost no difference between the two editions. This book still refers to a floppy disk as a normal form of data storage?!?! The examples are the same too. As I'm reading through my 3rd edition while writing this review, I am severely missing the 90 dollars I forked over.

The content in my opinion is fine, not too hard to get through. So why am I giving this book a low rating? The publisher has not justified at ALL a new edition. You might think "Well the new edition will have different programming homework problems to work"

BARELY. Keep in mind this is not one, but TWO editions old. The only difference is that on some chapters, the newer edition has 2 or 3 more problems, but the problems they have in common are exactly the same down to the numbers.

If you are thinking about buying this book, just go buy this one for a penny + shipping. [...]

In the statistically improbable event that your teacher assigns a problem that your edition doesn't have, just ask a classmate to see their book for 2 minutes and write it down! Or use the school library edition if one is available.

I am a first-year student at Bellevue Community College in WA pursuing an AA with the intention of transferring to a four-year program in Computer Science. I am reading the 5th edition of this book, which was assigned to me in the "Fundamentals of Computer Science I" course.

I have found the book to be understandable and useful. However, I think prospective buyers should consider the aims of the book's authors and the audience to which they are writing.

I feel the aim of this book is not to teach the details of the C++ programming language. Rather, it is to use C++ as a tool for teaching basic computer science and programming concepts.

I think the audience to which the authors are writing is U.S. college students majoring in Computer Science and taking their first course in the subject. As such, the book's authors assume readers have already completed the typical pre-college sequence of mathematics (Algebra I & II, Geometry, Trigonometry/Precalculus). I think they further assume that readers are familiar with using computers and have access to one with a compiler installed.

Given the above context, I've found the book to be a helpful tool in understanding programming concepts. The book introduces a software development method and approach to problem solving that it then uses in demonstrating how each programming concept contributes to designing a program.

I have two complaints with this book.

First is that it contains numerous typographical and other errors. Some of these errors truly impede your progress through the text. For example, in Example 5.5 on page 241, the negative sign is replaced with the number 2, so what should read as "-5 degrees Celsius" instead reads as "25 degrees Celsius". It took a lot of puzzling before I finally discovered that error!

Other significant errors occur in the answer keys that accompany the exercises. For example, one exercise asks to find the value of "char(int('z') - 32)". The answer according to my compiler is 'Z', but the answer key to the problem on page 380 says the answer is 'R'. One or two such errors could be expected in a programming text, but this book contains many, many such errors.

My second complaint is with the book's references to its own figures. The text frequently refers to earlier code listings, tables, and examples, which means a lot of flipping back and forth through the book. What makes this worse is that the book fails to provide the page number of these earlier figures, instead giving the figure's number (such as "Listing 4.1"). The result is that I find myself repeatedly having to go scanning through a previous chapter to find the figure in question. Sometimes a paragraph refers to multiple figures in different parts of the book, which means you need to employ a handful of bookmarks just to finish reading a single paragraph.

Overall, I've found the content of the book to be useful, but the above difficulties with its editing and design mean I think it deserves only a medium recommendation.

If you have the 3rd edition, please tell me specifically what you find good or bad about it. I picked it over a number of others. The primary competing ones either tried to cover too much or had a jumbled appearance that I thought would be confusing.

So send me references to particular pages or examples. This will help us all and could help my teaching of it at Northeastern U. in Boston.

-- Professor Bob Futrelle, futrelle@ccs.neu.edu

PS: I'll review the book more thoroughly after teaching from it for three months.

this is probably the hardest c++ book i have ever attemted to read. it's as if they purposely made it so that people can't figure it out.

We were required to use this as a textbook as well. It is very hard to understand even for someone who has been programming for a while. Worst computer book I've ever bought.

We were required to use this as a textbook. It is hard to understand,especially in an introductory course. My instructor pointed out the differences between C and C++. This text shows C programming not C++. For example, iostream.h instead of iostream, math.h instead of cmath,and there is no mention of using namespace std. If you want to learn C++, do not buy this book!

This book isn't for any beginner!! I've read it for about 150 pages now, and still don't know what it's talking about !?

Hard to Understrand with too few example