Customer Reviews

Schaum's Easy Outline: Programming with C++ (Schaum's Easy Outlines)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

With this book I learnt C++ from scratch. Even now when I can handle C++ quite well and used it to earn a living, I am still using the way the author presented the material in this book to think when I write OO programs. I said it's a "close to perfect" book is, in fact, to express a kinda regret that I need to find some other materials on C++ to tell me more about multiple inheritance. If not taking this into account, I would rate this a 5-star book. From scratch, it shows and walks with you the way from how to write procedural functions, arrays, pointers to classes, from simple private inheritance to polymorphism and from objects to containers. Simply, it's really a great book for beginners.

This is an excellent supplement to most of the college level textbooks in C++ programming. Many authors of C++ textbooks are taken up by the apparent need to illustrate complex object oriented concepts (lest Java be seen as the alpha and omega in object oriented languages)with long winded "case studies" or "programming projects" that seem contrived (see any book by Deitel for examples of such.)Some other authors think that their exercises and examples are places to showcase their ingenuity and possession of programming tricks (see Daniel Liang's "Displaying A Pyramid Of Numbers" in Chapter 3 of Introduction to JAVA Programming, Comprehensive Version, 5th Edition, as an example of such.) But what about simple exercises to see if you've mastered the basics of arrays, loops, and simple functions? Let's face it, it will be a couple of years before you'll be asked to work on the code for an ATM machine (Deitel), in the meantime buy this book and focus on the basics.

Who referred to this book having mistakes:

They seem to be stuck in the stone ages of C programming.

Since the new ANSI standard came out, (which compilers are still attempting to catch up to), header files have not used a .h extension, C Standard library headers have been renamed and so on.

Every negative point the person makes indicates a complete lack of knowledge, especially accurate knowledge of the C++ standard.

As such that review should be completely and utterly disregarded.

This book is definitely head and shoulders above the crap that people like Herb Schildt have been putting out.

Thanks.

The number of books on C++ on the market has exploded in recent years, no doubt due to the growing popularity of this language and the accompanying object-oriented paradigm. With code reusability and software engineering becoming crucial elements of both business and scientific programming, C++ has become the language of choice for many developments in these areas. The author has written a pretty good book on C++ here, but readers will need to know a lot more about programming than what the author assumes, namely that one could be a beginner to programming. There is an element of abstraction in object-oriented programming that might at first seem alien to a newcomer to programming, so it is best that this kind of programming be introduced after one has gained some experience in programming. That being said, an ambitious reader who needs to jump right into programming without any prior experience will find the book helpful in this regard. And, like all books in the Schaum's Outline series, many examples and problems are given to test the reader's understanding of how to program in C++.

Most of the important concepts in C++ are introduced in this book, and there are really no surprises or idionsyncracies in the author's approach to teaching C++. Naturally one will have to run some of the programs developed in the book, and the author has inserted warnings in various places in the book that alert the reader to possible conflicts with different C++ compilers. In addition, he tries to adhere to current standards in software engineering regarding comments and code design. Readers who have programmed in C will notice right away its legacy in the language constructs of C++. Performance issues that arise between the choice of C and C++ are not discussed in the book, due no doubt to its goal of being an elementary introduction. The author does include a discussion of the notorius and antiquated "goto" statement in C++, but warns, thankfully, that use of these may result in code that is very difficult to debug. For those readers intending to do scientific programming in C++, brief discussions with code examples of roundoff error, random number generation, and linear regression, Monte Carlo simulation, are given. For the reader astute in mathematics, the author discusses, again with code examples, the Euclidean and Babylonian algorithms, the game of craps, the Sieve of Eratosthenes. In addition, a good discussion is given of the difference between passing by value and passing by reference. A nice example is given of how to use a function as an array subscript.

The author shows effectively how to use pointers to functions to define functions of functions by passing a function pointer as a parameter to another function. Friend functions are also introduced. These are considered by some to be a violation of the object-oriented paradigm, but they can be powerful in practice, particularly with the use of operator overloading. In addition, a very effective discussion is given of virtual functions and polymorphism, and templates and iterators. For the scientific programmer in particular, this is a very powerful feature of C++.

Like software that is rushed out the door full of bugs, this book seems to have been rushed to the printer and is REPLETE with errors. Granted, for $15 this book is still a bargain, but get the errata and go through it and correct all the errors first. In fact, it's got so many errors that I've pretty much set it aside until the second edition.

Again, too many errors for the rather complicated examples he presents. Tread carefully...

I have purchased several C++ books, and this one is by far, the best...
This book makes a great subway companion, and it's not a 1,000 page monster. I love the way the author explained pointers. He uses simple graphics to visualize memory...but they are very effective...

Even with the tremendous number of mistakes and typos, this is still a nice compact review book to read while you're on the subway or don't feel like lugging a >800 page C++ primer around. You still need to have a good C++ reference and tutorial book, though.

I bought this book after I took one semester of programing class with C++, just to freshen my memory by solving many problems. it was very useful, after all, then when I started to take the next programing course, I felt very comfortable. if you think about this price and the ingredients, it is a great buy. i have other C++ books for more detail references. the best part of this book is that you can try all the problems if you want since all the problems have solutions, so you can check right after you solve the problems. (please check for some mistakes in the programs -- you will find out if you write your own programs and run them) I highly recommend this book.

I read this book because I'm going back to C++ programming after having been away for awhile and felt the review would be helpful.

This book generally does a good job reviewing the basics, although it might be a bit difficult to follow in places if you weren't familiar with the concepts to begin with. Thus, if you're looking for a book to review the basics of C++ (like I was) or something to supplement a college textbook, this is a great book for you.

With that said, this book covers only the BASICS of C++. Reading it instead of a full-length treatment of C++ is like reading the CliffNotes version of "Les Miserables" instead of the real thing and thinking you fully grasp the book. Obviously such a short book can't cover everything, and the things it does cover aren't covered in nearly as much detail as a full-length book. There are several topics, such as templates, that get little or no coverage. Also, while this book has abundant examples, it lacks things that would be found in a longer textbook like exercises.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this book for review or for a supplement to a college textbook but not instead of a full-length book.

I used this book as a supplement to another text on C++. Then I discarded the other book and used this alone, for this was too good. As a student of programming, I find this text easy to use, and the practice sections are also wonderful.

I recommend this book to any serious C++ learner.