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C++ How to Program (5th Edition) Review by S. Khairalla
Is C++ really that hard?
Like many reviews mentioned, this book is too verbose, but I might add it attempts to be a book about Programming, Computer Science and Software Engineering all at the same time, for example when it discusses (For and While loops) it goes on to discuss the theoretical details about algorithms and so on. At the end of every chapter there is a Software Engineering case study that keeps developing as the book proceeds with UML diagrams and everything.
Even as a programming book it attempts to cover too many topics which can be divided in several books. I have seen whole books dedicated to efficiency in C++, a topic which the authors have also tired to cover with many notes scattered through the chapters which tend to distract the reader from the main topic and interrupt his/her line of thought. They could have included a chapter about efficiency and best practices, or maybe it could have been okay had they not decided to include anything and everything they know about Computers that the book became so bloated and disorganized already.
There is also a chapter about Web Programming which in my opinion should not go in a book about C++.
My dislike for the book does not come from my lack of experience. When I used this book I already had years of experience programing in C and VBA and was taking an advanced C++ course as a graduate student. I thought it would be as easy as learning a couple of new concepts; objects, inheritance and polymorphism, but this book turned my experience into a real pain. It is a total mess and so badly organized, that, like one of the reviewers said, would drive any sane person nuts.
I already passed my C++ course with an 'A' and been doing many Java projects for about 1.5 years now, however when I went back to the book as a refresher for C++ my experience with it did not get any better. I still find it an awful book.
I learned C back in 1995 from Robert Lafore and that book was indeed a charm. I always heard that pointers are a scary topic but reading Lafore made me wonder why people are scared from pointers, Lafore made it very easy to understand, but between 1995 and now I have not seen a more painful book about C++ than Dietel's How to Program.