Customer Reviews

Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have read several "teach yourself" books from various companies and have found this to be up there as one of the best. In fact, I felt that it was well above and beyond every other book I have read in the "24 hour" quickstart category.

If a programer is going to be programing in an object oriented language THEY NEED (not should but need) to understand the concepts seperate to any one language. It is not the purpose of this book, nor should it be, to explain OO programming. If this book was to contain "the greater picture within the overall framework of object-oriented programming" it would have to be double the size and would be a "teach youreself in a couple of weeks" book.

PLEASE REMEMBER - this book is ONLY a quickstart guide, not a comprehensive language or object-oriented programming reference manual!!

Anyone with any OO knowledge will find this book to be the clearest and fastest way of learing the basics of the C++ language. Jessy Liberty has shown that he can explain concepts clearly and concisely. This book was a very good begining for me and has allowed me to go on to further reading and programming of Visual C++ and C Builder with confidence.

On the bright side, most of what is said in this book does make sense to the amateur computer programmer. I can't offer the view point of someone who is an absolute programming novice, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say this book is definately not for that person. This book expects you to have a least a basic understanding of some fundamental principles of programming, and by extension a few pieces of programming lingo as well, but not very much.

The book doesn't suffer from the "unknown jargon" syndrome so much as it does from the "very-scantly-explained-small-topic" sydrome. By that I mean, there are subject matter scattered throughout the book that isn't necessarily important to know at the moment, but they are so vaguely explained that they distract and confuse the reader, leaving one to ask "what does he mean?" and totally missing point in the meanwhile.

The most frustrating aspect of the book is the code. I've re-written most of the code in the book, and only one hasn't compiled (and even that was sort of an obvious typo). However, that's a long way from saying the quality of the examples given are high.

The most striking thing about the code is that it lacks a lot of in-code comments. Comments would have made the examples more meaningful as the reader was doing them. In an attempt to make up for this, a "line-by-line" analysis of the code is offered after each sample listing, but that only spawns more problems. First, the analysis sometimes says it is refering to line numbers which, clearly, it is not. Sometimes the lines numbers it refers to are blank! Secondly, the analysis skips lines or gives very vague explanations as to what is going on, often leaving the reader wondering what went on in those line he or she didn't understand!

Lastly, the book offers rather weak reviews and summarizations of the chapters. It asks questions that are not very important to your understanding of C++, and it doesn't offer any material for self-examination of topics. For instance, an assignment at the end of every chapter could have put the knowledge gained to the test.

If you'd ask me if you can learn C++ from this book alone, I'd say 'sure' but it will confuse you every now and then with little explanation. Also, there is nothing that seperates it from 500 other C++ books that makes this one worth buying over the rest of the herd.

I am currently working my way through your wonderfully informative book, "Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours". I've found it to be a well written, sometimes light-hearted approach, to learning what can sometimes be an overwhelming topic. I am a novice at programming, and as such, I am seeking to learn as much as possible in the near future. You book has certainly given me a head start. Again, I sincerely appreciate your clean, concise, writing style, and hope that you continue to publish your excellent series of instructional books.

After learning programming through various books I have to say that this author is the clearest that I have found to date. I highly reccomend this book to readers whom do not require pages of useles metaphors, and just require processes and concepts explained CLEARLY (the clearest of any author I have read) and PRECISELY (covering the needed details).

I can only guess that other reviewers are VERY new to programming to state that this author is not clear. As for humor and entertainment... if you are honestly expecting a programming language book to contain humor and be entertaining you should seriously consider whether you are in the right profession!!! This IS a great book, and DOES explain all that a begining programmer should require.

Please realise that it is NOT compiler specifec. It does not matter whether you are programming on Linux, Mac, Dos, Windows, XWindows, Palm Piolot or your latest digital watch!! If you have a C++ compiler and need to know the basics of the language get this book.

First, don't believe anyone who can claim to teach you Java in 24 hours - it's like trying to learn French in a day. Once you accept that essentially this is a 24-chapter book rather than a race against the clock, it all makes much more sense.

The author does an admirable job of covering a very complicated topic. I last programmed OO at college so it was useful to have a refresher on many of the concepts. The first 10 hours (chapters) move at a fine pace and leave you feeling really quite confident. The GUI chapters, on the other hand, made me realize that it's all still very complicated and I'll need more books to fully understand what's going on.

There are some tough areas here and I would expect the average reader to struggle with one or more. I didn't have any issues with getting the code samples to run (such a problem on so many programming books) and I didn't think there were any unreasonable leaps from one chapter to the next. Even the humor and unrelated trivia sections didn't bother me much.

Overall, it's a pretty solid book for starting off in Java, though I'd recommend understanding some programming basics first. You won't finish the 24 hours with an ability to write fully featured Java apps but you will be equipped with everything you need to know to study further.

This book was extremely easy to plow through. I enjoyed the fact that it helped me set up my IDE beforehand. The lessons went in the order I expected them in, and there were plenty of projects to practice the skills on. Let me say that I already had a ton of Visual Basic experience, and have already gone through the Java 24 hrs book, so this was easy for obvious reasons. I bought this simply because I wanted a casual introduction to C++.

As per the 24 hrs experience, you will be treated as though you have no programming knowledge whatsoever. For those who fit this category, this book is definitely for you. Even for those who know languages fluently like Visual Basic or Java, this book is a nice (albeit tedious) introduction to C++.

My main beef with this book is that it brags about how it assumes you have no prior programming knowledge, and then it leaves you twisting in the wind in the very first program. I was stuck with compile errors and absolutely zero help from the author. I followed the instructions to the letter and even re-wrote AND proof-read the "simple" program several times. Fearing this as a sign of things to come, I returned this book the next day.

I'm not criticizing this book -- well, actually I am, but it's conditional. I think if you are already a programmer, this book will make learning C++ much faster. For me, a totally green beginner, the book was good with some topics and especially confusing with others. I think the problem may be in that the author had to seriously condense some of the introductory material from his other book which is probably more comprehensive and in less of a rush. Some topics are presented crystal clear, while at other times, there is a term introduced and you have no idea what it means but it is used to support a concept that is also not completely explained. The question remains - is it really possible to learn C++ in 24 hours? I think not. And part of the problem, with me anyway, was that as I got further into the book, I became more and more confused and essentially had to purchase a companion text. Again, this book isn't bad in any way, but it is not a self-contained entity as the title would suggest. The title should be: Learn C++ In 24 Hours If You Already Have A Bit of Functional Programming Knowledge.

I didn't like this book. As someone brand new to C++ and programming, I found that the book didn't _explain_ very deeply about what you needed to do in order to program. It was like taking a class in school where the teacher says "Ok, just memorize all this stuff and be able to regurgitate it on the test." In other words, it reviewed the parts of C++ programming without adequate enough explanations as to when you'd use them or why. If you buy this book, buy another one as your primary text that will explain things extensively and only use this one to provide you with a bunch of examples.

I'm a skilled C/ASM programmer. I got to know concept of C++ a few years ago, read a book of C++ for C programmers, yet I can't write C++ in real project.

My current project is best to use C++ conceptually after I started it and I feel I have not enough knowledge of C++. I tried to read other books but they seem not simple nor easy. I just want to start ASAP, even ignore those advanced topics of C++.

Last weekend I sat in the Borders for four hours until it closed. I went through near 18 chapters of the book. I may not be able to remember all the contents I read, yet it helps me a lot. The explainations of concept are simple, easy and accurate, or the best. Example programs are clear and helpful. Generally a reader goes through C++ without difficult. I've not completed it yet, and can't found it in local library, So I may buy one.

This is a book very good for people to start C++. I strongly recommend people want to learn C++ go it first. I'm not sure whether it is suitable for people doesn't know C after I saw negative comments of somebody, but I doubt whether one can find better book for such people.

Yesterday I read the first chapter of a C++ book written by the C++ father, that chapter is the most difficult one of his book. Yet I can understand now. Thanks for Jesse.

I feel that the sample programs can be better if they would use shadow grey to emphasize the difference with previous samples.

Please notice there are books with the same name, but different authors.