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Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques
The major problem This book has one killer problem: It is not aimed at C++ programmers. Let me be more specific here; it is not aimed at ANSI C++ programmers. Instead, it is aimed at Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 programmers.
Is this a big deal? Yes. The cover of the book is rife with mentions of C++. It even mentions ANSI C++. There is one, and only one, reference to Visual C++ on the cover of the book. Even inside, the index lists only three references to Visual Studio, none to Visual C++. With quotes such as 'Hundreds of tips and techniques for advanced C++ programmers' on the cover, I was very surprised to realise this book is for Visual C++ 6.0 users only. At best, the cover of this book is misleading.
The rest of this review (and the book's rating) assumes you are still interested in the book. You therefore use only Visual C++ 6.0 and have no plans to upgrade.
Other problemsFor a book apparently aimed at intermediate and advanced programmers, this book contains a lot of tips that any experienced beginner should already know. Techniques such as ensuring you never return a pointer to an automatic variable really have no place in a book with the stated audience. Really, this book would be more suited to programmers who were still learning C++.
Except there are a number of other issues that make this book poorly suited to people learning C++. Instead of using standard C++ strings, this book chooses NULL-terminated C strings. Files are not included the C++ way (cstdio instead of stdio.h, iostream instead of iostream.h). The STL is not mentioned at all, with dynamic arrays having their own chapter rather than a simple mention of vectors and with an entire chapter devoted to code for sorting instead of showing the programmer how to use the STL sorting algorithms. The smart pointers? Either use the built-in autoptr or use boost.org's vastly superior implementation.
Some good stuffThis book is not completely without redeeming qualities. Many of these techniques are good and useful. If you are a new Visual C++ 6.0 programmer and you are learning from a substandard text, you may find this book covers some of the shortfalls of your other textbook. Similarly, if you are taking a class in C++ and your instructor is particularly lousy, this book could help you out.
SummaryMike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques is useless to any other than the beginning Visual C++ 6.0 student. It ignores ANSI C++ to focus instead on Microsoft's implementation. It contains a number of stylistic problems, relying far too heavily on C instead of the facilities provided by C++. And finally, it only covers techniques any reasonably experienced C++ programmer should already know.
You can purchase Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
pf.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the eleventh hour, has altered his presentation to the U.N. Security Council to try to satisfy the concerns of Congressional Democrats, as well as U.S. critics elsewhere in the world.
Previously, Mr. Powell planned to show images and documents demonstrating that the Iraqi government has weapons of mass destruction and is deliberately deceiving U.N. inspectors.
However, the White House has become convinced that even with such evidence, the U.N. and Democrats in Congress will still oppose action to disarm Saddam Hussein.
So, instead, Mr. Powell will present the following accusations against Iraq:
--Saddam Hussein personally owns guns, and uses them.
--Iraq produces oil, the combustion of which will doom the planet to a second ice age.
--Saddam supports the death penalty and uses it.
--Some Iraqis, including government officials, drive Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV).
--Saddam believes Iraq is better than other countries.
--Saddam is decisive, often seeing issues in black-or-white terms, rather than countless shades of grey.
--Many Iraqis are meat eaters.
--Many Iraqis are "pro-life," opposing abortion.
A few Democrats who have previewed the script for the presentation expressed outrage at Iraq, and wondered why President Bush has not previously gone public with this "damning evidence."
"We are ready to authorize the use of overwhelming force," said one unnamed Senate Democrat. "This crazed dictator must be stopped before his ideas spread throughout the region."
been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Am I the only one who thinks that sounds like a really, really, really lame comic strip for geeks.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This is a very good review of the book. I swear you slashdot geeks are nothing but a bunch of women hating nerds.
All the best,
--Achmed
Swaribabu Consulting Inc. -- We code so you don't have to
That's why I come to Slashdot, to hear 14-year olds "tell it like it is".
Keep it up!