Customer Reviews

Windows 2000 Programming from the Ground Up

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

 

 

Other '...from the ground up' books from this author have been great. His teaching style and examples showing users how to build complex windows applications have always been easily read by novices. This book- is without a doubt, no exception. It follows the same format as his former books (Win95, Win98), but he explicitely discusses the differences between Windows2000 and Win98 so that anyone can easily distinguish the differences between the two. All of the material taught throughout this book is well and fully explained in plain english. Even some of the more advanced topics introduced in this book are easily explained using the author's interesting teaching techniques. Finally, I believe that this is a great book if any beginner programmers are interested in programming for windows. However, keep in mind that you must have knowledge of C/C++ if you plan to program in Windows. With that I said, I totally reccamend this book to any newbie windows programmer!

This book is by far the best on the market for beginning Win32 programmers. I have an extensive Visual Basic background and needed to get up to speed on programming Windows in C/C++. Herb's style of writing is very simple to understand. He explains all of the code in the book in great detail. Although the book does not nearly cover even a majority of the Win32 API, Herb's writing style gets the reader fluent enough in the strange Win32 dialect to allow you to read through MSDN and understand what you are reading.

When I had to contact the author to clarify some things, he was always willing to help. Schildt is by far the leader in introductory Windows programming books.

Unlike the guy that gave it two stars for the crappy binding, I felt I should just take one off because the content is so good. Indeed this books covers everything a windows programmer needs to know(for win32 API). I personally like the "from the Ground Up" style this author uses. After going through Petzold's book, and listening to everyone heralding it from on high, I seriously feel that Schildt's explanation of the Win32 API is superior. If you're a hardcore nerd, and love the unnecessary technical detailing of the example programs in Petzold's version, then this book will probably not be suited to you. This book is for someone who has learned most of the C language and wants to move on to programming windows. If you're unsure of what an LRESULT CALLBACK is or how the windows system actually works with your application , you'll find the author does a nice job outlining all of these explanations as well as supplying a vast amount of source code which is working, and readable. All in all, a magnificient book. A word to the wise, however: the binding is absolutely awful.

This is an exellent book. If you have some experience with programming c++(you don't have to be an expert), get this book. After going through some chapters, you will understand the concept of win32 programming, and soon, you will write a professional looking applications. The only thing that I would like to see in this book is how to program network(tcp/ip), but it is still awesome without it. If I could, I would give 10 stars. And before I go, I like to say that the author did really good job. After all, he did graduated from my university. LOL.

This is absolutely one of the best books for learning beginning programming in Win32. Schildt does not waste time explaining programming concepts that you should already know, but instead uses those to teach you how to implement Windows programs starting from the very basic and then moving into more complex, useful applications ( a short coverage of dll's and writing a screensaver come to mind ). Keep in mind that this book does not lend itself toward system programming applications, but more towards GUI based desktop apps. If you are looking to move into a more low level area, such as writing system processes, then I still highly recommend this book as a stepping stone into understanding some of the basic architecture of Windows applications.

I must have spent about $300 looking at books that basically only copy the documentation right from the MSDN library but can't really explain the code in plain English. This book really shed light on the obscure syntax of the API world. Other books as well as the MSDN library assume that you already know the basics. So to all of you, especially the ones wanting to learn programming with MFC, buy this book before you start losing your hair trying to learn Windows programming the hard way.

This book began literally falling apart within less than an hour of gentle handling. I complained about this to the professor in the class where the book was suggested, and he held up a chunk of pages that had fallen out of his own copy of the book with a sideways frown.

The material on the Win32 API written by the author seems good, though. If you want/need a dry but pretty good introduction to Windows 2000 Programming (not MFC, which is a different book), and can find a low-priced copy of this book, it's still a good read. I plan to keep my copy, but I expect the usefulness of the writing to outlive the binding.

This is the only resource I can find with good examples of using the tab control in C. The book is easy to follow and full of good content, but the binding is lousy, it fell apart on me within a week.

This book assumes the reader is a C programmer. The book teaches Windows programming (strictly speaking, WIN32 programming, which is writing applications in straight C (making the 32 bits calls to the OS API) with the thousands of C functions defined as being part of the WIN32 API(Application Programming Interface)) from the very beginning on to multithreading applications - it is as comprehensive as a single book can be on this subject. I compiled the code using MS Visual C++ 5 and never had any problems - the programs compiled and ran as described in the book. I have several books on WIN32 programming and I find this one to be the most easy both to understand and to move through the material and I am reading the book a second time - even though I ultimately plan to develop with C++ and MFC, and the .NET framework. I have heard it said that one can't become a mature MFC programmer without some understanding the WIN32 API - The MFC (and .NET ) classes being merely wrappers around the WIN32 API functions. Please see .NET Framework Solutions: In Search of the Lost Win32 API for a discussion and contrast of WIN32 and .NET framework (Visual C++,C# and Visual Basic) programming.

This book comes highly recommended, in my opinion, and I know the author Herb Schildt to be a computer language expert and a prolific author - I purchase all of his books. However, (physically) the binding of the book is of very poor quality as both I and other reviewers seem to agree.