Customer Reviews

Scientific and Engineering C++: An Introduction with Advanced Techniques and Examples

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barton and Nackman is probably the best advanced C++ book I have read. It covers the basics of C++ programming for FORTRAN and C programmers, then dives into more advanced material. The book discusses many important design issues, such as how to represent and take advantage of name, structure, and function commonality. Several of the later chapters build extended examples making use of advanced template techniques. One chapter develops in detail a family of array classes, another presents classes for smart pointer functionality. Though this book predates the standard template library, it discusses the use of iterators to provide sequential access to data stored in classes. My favorite chapters build a family of template classes to implement algebraic categories, e.g. groups, monoids, rings, and fields, and a set of classes to implement some rudimentary symbolic computation capabilities through function objects. The use of templates in the later chapters is truly advanced and it is fascinating to see many of the tricks templates allow you to perform.

My only gripe with the book is its age. It predates the ISO/ANSI C++ standard and the standard template libraries. It would be interesting to see how the authors would incorporate these recent advances into their treatment of advanced C++ programming.

Despite being a book for scientists and engineers, Barton and Nackman should be read by everyone doing serious C++ programming. Highly recommended.

Overall, this is a TREMENDOUS book. The example projects used are immediately relevant to the target audience - scientists and engineers. Some of the concepts presented (in 1994) are just now coming into prominence in the C++ community. The only reason the book does not get 5 stars is that the code examples are outdated. A lot of time is spent on developing different containers and exception classes, but they do not employ the STL or the standard exception heirarchy for these. Also, their "hand-rolled" boolean type conflicts with the now standard bool type. I think this is a major shortcoming. A second edition of the book using ANSI c++ and STL would, I believe, be of great benefit.

I was first interested in this book for its implication of the title, scientific computing (whatever it is). However, I must say I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the book is not just relevant for the implied target audience, but also for those who need a good introduction to OOP with C++.

What makes this book great for learning OOP is that it is rich in concrete examples that are relevant for people who have worked in science or engineering. Many OOP books take more abstract approaches, and often the relevance of discussions for the practical situations is not clear. It is not the case with this book.

Another thing I like is the quick and concise introductions of C++. I think the authors do a great job of summarizing "do's and don'ts" of C++ by extracting the information in indented, bullet style lines throughout the book. Other C++ books are just enormous and often it is hard to find relevant information.

I would guess the drawbacks of learning from this book is that if you do not have any background in science or engineering, you might have harder time understanding some examples in it. Also, the book is somewhat outdated in terms of coding practices (pre-Standard Library, etc.).

In any case, the superb introduction to C++ OOP is in this book, which mostly remains unmentioned when people talk about good C++ books authored by other prominent authors. This one definitely deserves better recognition.

This book does a good job of explaining C++ in the big picutre and in a scientific light. The examples are good, although there could be more. The section on arrays is good, although when you want to actually see the code for multidimensional arrays you have to go to the online source code. This is when your frustration level goes way up. I tried to compile many of the sources in Visual C++ and no luck at all. After looking things over I discovered that this code does not have terminating semicolons, missing braces and really difficult bugs. The authors claim to have compiled and run the code on some old IBM mainframe -- their compiler was not very up to date! I tried to contact the authors at the specified e-mail address in the book and had it bounced back to me. After further investigation it looks like the authors have moved on to bigger and better things, and can not be reached.

Buy this book for the text, not the code. MTW, not all the code is given in the text book. If the code was fixed, and some more examples were given this would be a GREAT book, too bad...

I found this book to be very good, except for a few unnecessary parts. A lot of what the book covers (i.e., "scientific & enginnering") doesn't overlap my problem domain, and the Fortran/C intro sections were skipped since I already knew C++. It would have been better if the Fortran/C sections were put into different books. However, the rest of the book was excellent; even the stuff I didn't use right away was intellectually stimulating.

This book should be bought by every serious C++ programmer. Barton and Nackman show several *excellent* examples of more advanced template usage than the boring old "generic container".

For those of you who are more familiar with advanced template programming, the "B&N trick" gets its name because it's in this book.

I waited two years before buying this book - and it was a mistake I find very hard to understand in retrospect. The book is recommended by Scot Meyers, by James Coplien, and even by Bjarne Stroustrupp (the inventor of C++.) Don't let the title of the book fool you: it's almost essential reading for anyone doing serious work with C++, and probably should be for designers and programmers using other object oriented languages too.

Skip past the first 199 pages (which provide an incredibly rapid introduction to C++ for Fortran programming particle physicists) and you'll find one of the finest discussions of the fundamentals of object oriented design ever written - an essential antidote to the "finding the nouns" silliness of too many books. B&N is the perfect intermediate to advanced level object oriented design book, and might even be the best choice for a first-timer who really wants to get to grips with the subject (or who has to find out enough about object oriented design to use it in the real world rather than just pass an exam.)

If you're interested enough to want know more, but still not certain you should read the book, I'd suggest picking up a copy and reading the design study in chapter 8 - the best I've seen in any book, including Design Patterns.

This book is designed for Fortran and C scientific programmers who are wanting to make the switch to C++. It is well written, has a nice discussion of function objects and how to integrate legacy code in a C++ environment. A must read for all academic and scientific programmers who are going to be using C++. More examples of scientific applications in C++ would be nice, but the book is a good one as it is. The best part of the book is the chapter on algebraic structures, as this is a topic usually considered too abstract for books on scientific programming. The authors have done a good job of explaining the abstract algebra behind OOP. The book is worth the price...well worth the investment. -LC (Global Mathematics, Inc)

Enumerates reasons for choosing C++ as an object-oriented programming language for scientific applications. Provides an excellent introduction to C++ concepts for FORTRAN programmers. Gradually explains advanced techniques such as templates, abstract interfaces, and class hierarchies. Develops new C++ data types for arrays, matrices, smart pointers, strings, and Albelian groups. Employs relevant code examples in areas such as finite element grids, solving systems of equations, GPIB controller, and automated dimensional analysis. Discusses techniques for creating C++ wrappers for legacy C and FORTRAN libraries. Concludes with a program for data modeling that is built from the preceding chapters. The data-modeling chapter illustrates bottom-up program design.

This book was written with good focus and i think it's a succsses.The idea of transforming programming in engineering to the Object Oriented plane is highly wellcomed and this book presented a cracked down insight to this transformation.The old time, die-hard procedural programmers need to take patient look and change for the Object Oriented approach.

This work clearly illustrates the concepts of object oriented programming paradigm with emphasis on scientific and engineering applications in a lucid way using very good examples. After introducing basic C++ syntax, function overloading, classes, constructor and destructor in the first part of the book, the second and third parts of the book quickly delve into concepts like virtual function interfaces, inheritance, templates and explains them using concrete examples, and if possible, in an abstract way. Some use of these advanced techniques has attracted the attention of other C++ gurus. An excellent reference for OOP-inclined scientists and engineers.