Customer Reviews

Programming and Problem Solving With C++

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I am in my fourth term of learning C++, and this book was theone required for my first two terms. I came into the program at myUniversity with no programming experience at all, and I was able to quickly understand basic concepts by having a great instructor and reading (and re-reading) this book. While not a great reference, I still consult it for basic concepts I might forget after a long break. If you view it for what it is -- an introductory book -- then I highly recommend it. I found the sections on looping and other conditionals very helpful that first term; functions were handled well, too. This is a book to read and re-read. If the class construct freaks you out, then read that chapter two or three times and you will get the basic idea. A lot of my classmates hated this book -- I never really got a good reason why. Unfortunately, the section on pointers is a little weird, although the info is accurate. I never liked the programming case studies at the end of the chapters either -- they didn't seem to flow well from the chapter material presented. Looking back at the book, especially as an intro book, I can't say enough how well the sections on classes were presented. For some reason, the writing style clicked with me, and the info provided a strong enough basis to further dive into the class construct -- which is an important topic and is the backbone of Abstract Data Types and Object Oriented Programming. Get another book, or a good instructor, for basic pointer concepts. Decent for linked lists. Minimal recursion. From what I've heard, C++ Primer Plus by Prata is a better book in some ways. That's next for me to get.

You can't float everyone's boat with a C++ book. As far as intro books goes there are around 40 or so of them, they cover the same material but differently. Some are better then others obviously, and the market is there to keep making more intro c++ books.

That said, even though this book is 1100 some pages, it's an easy read. Yes you can actually read this book, amazing. I read pretty fast... IF an author will offer a complete train of thought. Most textbooks don't, they leave you scratching your head, staring at a page. Rereading a sentence over and over saying it out loud and you still don't have a clue. And crap, there is no more text to help explain that sentence, it just sits there, like maybe if you think about what it says and reflect in a meadow over the words of the author you may one day understand that sentence. Ok so I got carried away.

Basically the most wonderful thing about this book is you can read it. You can sit down with zero knowledge, and the author will explain to you all you need. Each chapter takes about an hour to read, and more importantly you'll walk away understanding it. AMAZING!!

Content wise, it offers a great introduction to c++ without giving overly complex examples. It covers all of the intro level areas of C++ in great depth. If you actually read this book you won't be left in the dark. Thing is most people with textbooks or technical books like this read different parts and just jump into doing stuff. With a readable textbook like this there is no excuse not to go cover to cover. (I did)

The great thing about it is it touches on some of the more complex areas of c++ and if you read it, you have enough knowledge of the basics that when you get into advanced stuff you see how it all fits together. Getting basics down in something like C++ is important. People who say it says too much and covers too little don't understand the point of this book. That is, to teach a beginner all of the basics of C++. The details that some complain of, well those details are important, like it or not C++ is a detailed intricate language the least a book can offer is a firm understanding for other books.

Which is exactly what this book is just the beginning. If you've used other C++ textbooks but feel you may not have gotten the whole picture reading through this book cover to cover can help. If you're completely new to C++ and programming. Then get this book. It assumes a you know nothing attitude, and brings you up to speed in many areas of computers as well as programming. Scattered throughout the book are various tips to increase your view of programming and software design in general. Once again opening up doors to more advanced areas of study, giving you the big picture.

So if you want to start learning c++ get this book... and now some good book advice if you don't know what to buy, or where to start.

I'd recommend Beginning Visual C++ 6 by Ivor Horton
Even though the first 1/3 of it will be review it covers pointers more in depth as well as offering more complex examples. Even if you know c++ syntax it's still a challenging book. It then delves into windows programming and all the stuff a programmer would need to know about windows so as not to be ignorant.
Once again here the idea is to bring you up to speed.
Horton's book is not a fast read like this book, but very useful if you want a next step.

Then get a book on Data Abstraction the one by Adam Drozdek is an amazingly readable yet complete book on the subject.
From there you may be ready to browse through Bjarne Stroustrup's "The c++ programming language" if you were a beginner, in about 50 pages this book would be way over your head. It's an important book. Not only for c++ but to understand how the language was designed.

Moving onto Effective C++ and Exceptional C++ is a good move as well.
From there move onto books such "Design Patterns" is essential.

After that it's a matter of specialization. If you've made it that far you definitely a true programmer by now, and any language you pick up will be much easier with this kind of knowledge. Programming is a skill and even though most programming books overlap, this is good, each one will show you something new, provided you move beyond intro books.

From my own experience I would say try learning C++ from a set of books instead of just one book. Try reading the following books in sequence:

Getting Started with C++ Programming Language (S.K. Jain)

An Introduction to Programming with C++ (Diane Zak)

Programming and Problem Solving with C++ (Nell Dale)

It's bound to click.

This textbook is the best I have ever used in any course, and I have a Ph.D. in psychology so I have had a LOT of courses. As a beginning programming student, I found this book to be clear, concise, entertaining, and very helpful. When you get tired of all of the new terms, the author "takes a break" and either introduces you to a famous figure in the history of computer science, or does a little "chatting" about tips -- stuff that it would be helpful for you to remember, but not stuff you'll be tested on. I have been in the beginner's course for 2 months now, taking a web-based course, and have learned an AWFUL LOT just from this book. You WILL LEARN introductory C++ from this book.

This is a popular college textbook for good reason. Its not a C++ for Dummies or C++ in 24 hours that have you coding before you know what the heck your doing. It thouroughly expalins the syntax and semantics of CPP before you go 976-code crazy.

Many reviewers complain that the book is long winded. This complaint has some merit but it is neccessary to teach you how to fish rather then just giving you the fish like quickstart guides and the expecting you to figure out the best way to fish on your own by example. Ths by example doesnt work well with CPP. I highly recommend this book as well as Uckans guide to C which takes a similar approach but bites off smaller chunks.

I used this book for a introductory C++ course. I found the book easy to use and understand. Unfortunately, the book seems to skip around with concepts. Functions are covered in several different areas. The section on stream input/output was not comprehensive enough. Arrays was saved until much later in the book when I felt it should have been earlier in the book. I was confused about the presentation of classes. The author stated that this is an important subject but devoted only a portion of a chapter to the subject. I needed a supplemental text on C++ to help me with several sections of the book. The book needs a workbook with solved problems since the text does't have full examples of programs.

The book Programming and Problem Solving with C++ Second Edition has lots of problems. It is much more text heavy than it has to be. The authors do not "get to the point" soon enough, and this has the effect of confusing students new to C++. Example programs are not referenced as soon as they are presented. I think that this is inexcusable in an introductory text. Code that is presented, and not explained, is of limited value. To top it off, if the student tries to compile the code to see how it works, it is hit or miss. Sometimes the code will not run on UNIX based systems, and sometimes it will NOT compile correctly.

This book is of very limited value. It misses its target audience. There are better books out there to teach C++ basics.

This is a textbook. Most people who have used this book did so because it was REQUIRED. And I don't think they are using this text at MIT, so the exposition in this book is more on the long and descriptive side, which is just fine with me because I just happen to NOT be taking programming at MIT, where the beginner programmers are probably working on Cray hardware and wiring neural networks after the third session. I exaggerate, but probably not by much. That said, this is still a pretty decent book. The first few chapters feel textbook-ish because the photos are stock, you get those obligatory shaded sections that talk about "interesting topics" and the authors occasionally get all comprehensive describing systems analysis methods, hardware components, and software engineering methods. I was at first resistant to reading this because I thought it would all be review, but I actually learned some stuff which was missing in my brain. The structure of the book is atypical from standard C++ books because they spend a lot of time on i/o, conditionals, and simpler data structures, like more of the logical processing methods like you find in C or Pascal stuff. Object oriented focus doesn't really pick up until the last 1/4 of the book, and then the discussion veers off into data structures (linked lists, recursion, arrays) and basic algorithms. They're probably trying to cushion the blow leading into Data Structures in the next semester which I hear people have trouble surviving. So, I think people who are looking just for C++ OO stuff should look elsewhere. As a TEXTBOOK for total newbies, i.e., not math majors, it is probably a bit deep, but the authors I think are good at presenting the subject matter. I like the examples they use -- the examples tend to be short to medium length and relevant to the discussion. The "Problem-Solving" approach gets into doing case studies in each chapter, some of which are tough, others which aren't. The other examples are easy enough to be fun, and then get a bit hard. I think they are trying to get people to get in the habit of using programming as a tool rather than to learn the language as an end in itself. I do like the pace of the book, it does take its time. I especially like the diagrams in the book which are brief but concise, and there's lots of 'em, and, well, it really saves me the trouble of making them myself. I can understand the frustration behind some of the bad reviews, but I get the feeling the readers are more confused by C++ because it's a steep learning curve and many people who take intro C++ do not survive. However, the presentation in the book is as good as in Robert LaFore's books. Once again, my main complaint is it does not get much into OO stuff. I would not choose this book per se if it were not required -- I'd buy several books focusing each on its own topic -- but as a textbook, it's decent and easy to read, and it fulfills its purposes in a course.

Houston Community College requires this book for the first two semesters of C++ for students with little or no prior programming experience. While it was almost passable for the first semester, I found everything past chapter 12 abysmal. The example code is in one or two long involved programs at the end of each chapter, and these examples only illustrate the particulars the authors pick out. The chapters on pointers and records were especially poor. It appears that the authors were Pascal programmers before writing this book. They should have bypassed this effort with C++. I have no idea why anyone who reviewed this book whould rate it above 3 stars. The authors seem more interested in impressing readers with their complicated grammar than in teaching the concepts simply and concisely.

To IT students, C++ is a real tough subject. This book provide sufficient detail about the methodolgy of solving the problem. Compared to other text books(involoving too much library template), this book is real big hit for fresh guys.