Everyone's always got their opinions on books. As the Joker said in Batman: "You know how people are these days; this is attractive, that is not ... but that is all behind me now. I make art until someone dies. I am the first fully functioning homicidal artist." Okay, well not all of that relates, but you get the idea.
The books below are ones that I recommend for various reasons. The biggest being that I own most of the ones listed below, and the rest are on my christmas list. If you see a book you want to buy then simply click on it, and you will be taken to Barnes & Noble
whereby you can find more detailed information about it and purchase it safely.
Below the pictures of the books is a small summary with the things people will be most interested to know. At the bottom of the page is a key to what these exactly mean.
![]() ![]() Target: Beginner Use: Tutorial |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Okay, I know this is a C book, but its just great! It was my first teacher in the world of C and C++. My friend Mark D. Best gave me his copy of Borland C++ 5 and this book. Within three days I had read the entire book and created a small text adventure game. The speed was partially due to inspiration, but rarely are technical books that easy to read! Its not only easy to read, its fun to read. I am convinced that Dan Gookin is, by far, the greatest technical writer. I aspire to write my tutorials like he wrote this book! I own the first edition of |
![]() ![]() ![]() Target: Beginner Use: Reference |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I think the title pretty much sums up this book. Its very inexpensive, in fact I bought it when Foozles (a book store) was having a sale and it only cost me about eight bucks! I think for the price its the best money I've ever spent on a C++ book. There are a couple technicalities that snobs complain about, but I think in lew of the entire book they are very minor. This is a good humanistic reference. I was having trouble understand virtual functions at the time I bought this book in Foozles. I read it's little blurb on them and suddenly it made sense and I knew the book had to be mine. I own the first edition (far right picture), but recently I took a gander at the third in Barnes & Noble. It's a bit bigger than mine in both the physical size and number of pages. What the author added at the beginning was pretty unique in a C++ book. It has a big list of things you might want to do along with page numbers that help you with that kind of thing. For example, "How do I format output with cout?" would be paired with a page number explaining that. I really recommend this book. It's inexpensive and easy to digest. |
![]() ![]() Target: Intermediate Use: Reference |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I was required to buy this book for my introductory "C Programming" course at Centralia College, back in the day ;). At first I was appalled because the book is so terribly cryptic at times ... er, most of the time. But as I learned more C and C++ I kept coming back to it as a reference. Although it is mainly for "C" there is a great deal of C++ and in fact the last 1/5 of the book is dedicated purely to that. The bottom line, if you can do all the exercises (of which there are TONS!) no sweat then you are probably on your way to being a guru of C++ *patting you on the back*. It is expensive, but to offset that it's huge. The pages are glossy, strong, and thing so it's like a brick of pure information. I haven't read |
![]() Target: Novice Use: Tutorial |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I skimmed the first chapter of this book as I was searching for ideas for my own C++ Beginners Guide. I thought the author shoved too much stuff into the face of the reader and didn't "go all the way" in explaining them simply enough. It's fine if you pretty much know what you're reading, but when you get stuck there really isn't a whole lot there to help you. On the plus side it's huge and contains practically everything on the current standard of C++. That's another minus as it focuses completely on the new standard C++, which can be confusing and not altogether portable. |
![]() Target: Beginner Use: Tutorial |
Someone sent me an email recommending I take a look at this book. I have yet to read it, but they were very enthusiastic about it so I placed it here anyway. |
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