( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 8 2008
This book should have been titled "MFC with Visual Studio". (MFC "is Microsoft Foundation Classes", the C++ programming framework used in this book.) As for .NET, it's covered only in a brief section tacked on at the end. If you want to learn MFC and Visual Studio, there are many better books. If you want to learn .NET, there are many better books. The book consists of a number of programming projects, one for each chapter, with subjects like "Working with Timers", "Mouse and Keyboard", etc. The book gives a brief introduction and then walks you through the project with detailed instructions, code to be typed in, and so forth. There are brief explanations of what you are doing, but not enough so that you can really understand it - not enough to design a similar project of your own, and not enough to fix anything if you type it in wrong the first time. Some of the coding is pretty lame even in these brief fragments - a good programmer would write better code. One the positive side, you do get a little hands-on experience with Visual Studio. But surely there are better books for that than this one. Finally, since this is an introductory book, there are several pages of "sidebars" on the C++ programming language. But hey, if you don't know C++ before you start, these sidebars aren't going to help you. Most of the SAMS books I've read were pretty good, but this was far below standard. I don't usually take the time to write these reviews, but I disliked this book so much I felt compelled to warn others not to buy it.
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( 2 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 7 2005
The author David Chapman is the exception to the rule for "Sams Teach Yourself in 21 days" books, which are usually poorly written. But Chapman is an exceptionally good writer. I agree with all the positive reviews for this book. Chapman gives you a series of exercises and you learn by doing them. True, this book is not the only book you will need in C++.NET, but it is a good start. Another excellent book for Visual C++, that is not "managed C++" (.NET) but traditionaal Visual C++ (no garbage collection) is "Intro to MFC Programming with Visual C++" by Richard M. Jones. A bit dated? Hardly. Buy these two books and you'll be well on your way to understanding what the "wizards" do in Visual C++.
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( 3 of 11 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 7 2004
Starting as a C and C++ pro, I was looking after a book to apply my knowledge to Windows using Visual C++. I came from other systems (unix...).Target : get all basics in order to shorten by beginner stage.For about a year, from a beginner to independant developper status, almost anything I was looking for in this book happened to be fruitless. Everytime the MSDN Help online from VC++ was much more helptful.Let me give a simple example : - you want to display a button with a bitmap. Nothing from the Index. You go to "Adding controls to your application" - none. "Bitmaps..." : nope.VC++ help : you go to the index, "bitmaps" a few lines below "button" and... you got it.
