Overcomplicated

Hi,
I'm a recent graduate B.Sc CS and used this book extensively for a month+ as to prepare for a c++ job interviews.

Unfortunately I can't say I loved this book. I found the examples to be overcomplicated by irrelevant information and language to be ambiguous at the times.

As an example, from page 160 (classes/ covariant return types):
"In a derived class, a covariant return type is a pointer or reference to a class type that derives from the return type used in the base class" ?!

Code examples are contaminated by the irrelevant programming techniques and irrelevant code. Page 158, "declaring and using virtual functions", the code example extends over two pages. In it, author uses concepts of templates, complicated operators overloading, constructor and destructor, pure virtual functions (its different topic in the book, much later) as well as a very complicated programming code. And all of this extra information used to explain a rather simple virtual functions.

If the reader is not very familiar with some concepts of programming language, reader might face a difficulty to understand the topic illustrated, as it would be polluted with much unrelated code technique.

I wouldn't recommend this book for the beginners, and would proceed with caution if you are an intermediate programmer. This is a great start but author need to maintain focus on the particular topic and not to make it more complicated then it's already is. After all it's a reference book and not the collection of the brain teasers.

Other Reviews

• Dont use this as an introduction
• Research and references
• Overcomplicated
• Best reference for the core language with plenty of examples
• Great reference book