Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself ATL Programming in 21 Days

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
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I have recently started learning ATL (having read Inside COM by Dale Rogerson and some of Don Box). Teach Yourself ATL was my first ATL book. Bad Move...

His overall approach is, in my opinion, inappropriate. After having read 8 chapters I found myself thinking what do I know? I understand how to use the Wizards, but I still have no idea how the IUknown interface is implemented, or how objects are instantiated. In my opinion the only way to COM/ATL success is to understand what the Wizards are doing. Sure they're great in incredibly speeding up the COM development time but if you don't understand what their doing, your hardly any better off.

Kenn gives you the concepts well enough but concept after concept after concept eventually becomes meaningless unless you can see the dirty detail in action. The book is not a write-off but as a beginners text it didn't suit me.

Personally I found Tom Armstrongs "ATL Developers guide" much better. Instead of developing clients in MFC with all the extra messy details, he used bare-bones console apps which allow you to focus purely on COM/ATL. He talks about what ATL is doing and how the basics of COM is implemented. ATL at this level is dirty, messy stuff but its fundamental.

This book provides a tight, insightful introduction to ATL programming for the windows programmer moving to COM via ATL. Its also extremely useful as a reference tool.

A won't regret purchase and addition to the programmer's bookshelf.

Very good good book. It's really tech you the basic block of the ATL programming and the background that you need to move from Regular Visual c++ applications to ATL. The writer is going step by step How ever this book it not for Visual c++ beginners or if you are looking to become an expert in ATL. I was more interested in the DB and IIS aspects using ATL but it only give you the general idea.

Kenn Scribner's Teach Yourself Atl Programming In 21 Days provides would-be programmers with the fundamentals of using the Active Template Library system for programming. From using its many features to applying them to real-world business solutions, this provides a chapter-by-chapter study program of lessons which can be either followed methodically or browsed for maximum impact.