Review of C++ for Dummies C++ for
Dummies, by Stephen
Randy Davis should definitely not be your first book on C++ (note that
this review is referring to a slightly older edition).
Unfortunately, that tends to be the market for the For Dummies series,
and one they often do well at (for instance, C For
Dummies can be a great way to get started programming). Perhaps the
biggest problem with this book is that it lacks a consistent vision -- a lot
of the examples are haphazard (using rabbits to explain classes, for
instance), and Davis doesn't do a good job of getting across the reasons for
C++. In part, this isn't his fault: the reasons for using an object-oriented
language typically require a bit of programming experience on real-world
projects (preferably in teams). Some books can convey the complexities of
real-world problems better than others (Fred Brooks's The
Mythical Man-Month for instance), but it takes a gifted story
teller.Instead, this book comes off rather dry -- even with the sometimes colorful attempted examples -- and the examples are hollow, bearing little semblance to what you'd use the constructs discussed in the real world. (If you are new to C++, be prepared for a lot of analogies to animals and zoos when describing inheritance!) |
