Product Description

Essential C++ offers a fast-track to learning and working with C++. This book is specifically designed to bring you up to speed in a short amount of time. It focuses on the elements of C++ programming that you are most likely to encounter and examines features and techniques that help solve real-world programming challenges. Essential C++ presents the basics of C++ in the context of procedural, generic, object-based, and object-oriented programming. It is organized around a series of increasingly complex programming problems, and language features are introduced as solutions to these problems. In this way you will not only learn about the functions and structure of C++, but will understand their purpose and rationale.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149432 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Written for those C/C++ developers who want to deepen their programming knowledge, Essential C++ provides a short, effective tutorial to some of the most important features of the C++ language, including lessons on generic programming and templates.

Compression is the key here in this admirably concise text. The author explains C++ from the very beginning with basic syntax and language features and always uses some of the best features of today's Standard C++. Perhaps the best thing here is the integration of 'generic programming'(meaning the STL library of re-usable templates and algorithms for data collections like vectors, linked lists and maps, which are built in to any current C++ compiler).

By focusing on these key features, this tutorial demonstrates C++ in an up-to-the-minute style. (These "advanced" features can help simplify C++ programming from the very beginning.) This tutorial moves quickly and by the end of this book the author covers the basics of successful object-oriented design with C++ classes, generic programming, templates and exception handling. Short examples are the rule here and each chapter includes exercises for self-study (with solutions provided at the end of the book).

C++ is a very rich and very complicated programming language. Essential C++ cuts to the chase and gives the working programmer a tour of the latest and greatest language features in a compact format. As a quick-start guide to today's C++, this title complements the author's much more massive tutorial, C++ Primer. For anyone who knows a little C/C++ and wants to learn more, especially the newest features of Standard C++, this book certainly deserves a closer look. --Richard Dragan, Amazon.com

Topics covered: C++ fundamentals, data types and arrays, pointers, flow control, functions, generic programming and STL, generic algorithms, classes, constructors and destructors, polymorphism and inheritance, abstract classes, run-time type identification, templates and template functions, exception handling.

From the Back Cover

"Readers can pick up this book and become familiar with C++ in a short time. Stan has taken a very broad and complicated topic and reduced it to the essentials that budding C++ programmers need to know to write real programs. His case study is effective and provides a familiar thread throughout the book." --Steve Vinoski, IONA

For the practicing programmer with little time to spare, Essential C++ offers a fast-track to learning and working with C++ on the job. This book is specifically designed to bring you up to speed in a short amount of time. It focuses on the elements of C++ programming that you are most likely to encounter and examines features and techniques that help solve real-world programming challenges.

Essential C++ presents the basics of C++ in the context of procedural, generic, object-based, and object-oriented programming. It is organized around a series of increasingly complex programming problems, and language features are introduced as solutions to these problems. In this way you will not only learn about the functions and structure of C++, but will understand their purpose and rationale.

You will find in-depth coverage of key topics such as:

• Generic programming and the Standard Template Library (STL)
• Object-based programming and class design
• Object-oriented programming and the design of class hierarchies
• Function and class template design and use
• Exception handling and Run-Time Type Identification

In addition, an invaluable appendix provides complete solutions to, and detailed explanations of, the programming exercises found at the end of each chapter. A second appendix offers a quick reference handbook for the generic algorithms, providing an example of how each is used.

This concise tutorial will give you a working knowledge of C++ and a firm foundation on which to further your professional expertise.

0201485184B04062001

About the Author

Stanley B. Lippman is Architect with the Visual C++ development team at Microsoft. Previously, he served as a Distinguished Consultant at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). Stan spent more than twelve years at Bell Laboratories, where he worked with Bjarne Stroustrup on the original C++ implementation and the Foundation research project. After Bell Laboratories, Stan worked at Disney Feature Animation, originally as principal software engineer, then as software technical director on Fantasia 2000.

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Customer Reviews

Just right for a returning programmer
I bought this book having not used C++ since the early nineties and wanted a quick refresher course and to understand what had been introduced into the language following the ANSI standardisation.

This book quickly (and I do mean quickly) brought me back up to speed and made me aware of what had been introduced by the ISO/ANSI standardisation. Whilst no means complete it has given me the confidence to go forward and the clarity to understand what the standardisation introduced.

The format reminds me of the 2nd edition C++ Primer by the same author - if you liked that (I did) this will work for you. The exercises are good enough to consolidate what has been learned and if you really get stuck there are also example solutions to each problem in an appendix.

As this is fast paced I would not recommend it to a beginner. A combination of this book, and then "Effective C++" (Meyers) has given me great confidence very quickly.

The finest book on programming ever
My problem with most programming books is their enormous thickness. There is no way I have time to read a 800 page book on a new language, so i'm forced to use it as a reference and dip in when I need something. Therefore I lack any breadth of knowledge and often miss massively useful features.

This book beats that by being short and readable and yet containing very deep and accurate information about the language. It is not just a 'getting started' although it can get you started and it is not an overly compressed reference card although it can serve as a reference in many cases.

The book discusses exclusively modern post-ANSI c++. The stress is on the modern, the use of the standard libraries and on c++ Not c. The author gets you going straight away with classes and their use, not spending half the book on c and calling it c++.

The book is not ideal for a person wishing to learn a first programming language but there is no need to be an expert.

An awful book: unhelpful for beginner and expert alike
I bought this book because I was switching from Java to C++. I found it entirely unhelpful.

It is no good as a reference book: The index is pathetic, omitting many entries, so finding any information takes ages. The entries are often incomplete. It does not answer a lot of basic and important information on how C++ actually works. Most times when I tried to consult it, I found I had to use Google instead. I soon stopped using it; Google was faster and better.

It don't think it would be much good as a tutorial book either. It isn't friendly or accessible enough for beginners.