Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques

Reader yamla writes with the following review of Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques from APress. Yamla finds a few bright spots in this book, but also several weaknesses. Read on to see whether you fit into the group he says would find this book useful.

Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques
author	Michael Hyman and Phani Vaddadi
pages	239
publisher	APress
rating	2/10
reviewer	Chris Thompson
ISBN	1893115046
summary	This book is useless to any other than the beginning Visual C++ 6.0 students.

The major problem

This book has one killer problem: It is not aimed at C++ programmers. Let me be more specific here; it is not aimed at ANSI C++ programmers. Instead, it is aimed at Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 programmers.

Is this a big deal? Yes. The cover of the book is rife with mentions of C++. It even mentions ANSI C++. There is one, and only one, reference to Visual C++ on the cover of the book. Even inside, the index lists only three references to Visual Studio, none to Visual C++. With quotes such as 'Hundreds of tips and techniques for advanced C++ programmers' on the cover, I was very surprised to realise this book is for Visual C++ 6.0 users only. At best, the cover of this book is misleading.

The rest of this review (and the book's rating) assumes you are still interested in the book. You therefore use only Visual C++ 6.0 and have no plans to upgrade.

Other problems

For a book apparently aimed at intermediate and advanced programmers, this book contains a lot of tips that any experienced beginner should already know. Techniques such as ensuring you never return a pointer to an automatic variable really have no place in a book with the stated audience. Really, this book would be more suited to programmers who were still learning C++.

Except there are a number of other issues that make this book poorly suited to people learning C++. Instead of using standard C++ strings, this book chooses NULL-terminated C strings. Files are not included the C++ way (cstdio instead of stdio.h, iostream instead of iostream.h). The STL is not mentioned at all, with dynamic arrays having their own chapter rather than a simple mention of vectors and with an entire chapter devoted to code for sorting instead of showing the programmer how to use the STL sorting algorithms. The smart pointers? Either use the built-in autoptr or use boost.org's vastly superior implementation.

Some good stuff

This book is not completely without redeeming qualities. Many of these techniques are good and useful. If you are a new Visual C++ 6.0 programmer and you are learning from a substandard text, you may find this book covers some of the shortfalls of your other textbook. Similarly, if you are taking a class in C++ and your instructor is particularly lousy, this book could help you out.

Summary

Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques is useless to any other than the beginning Visual C++ 6.0 student. It ignores ANSI C++ to focus instead on Microsoft's implementation. It contains a number of stylistic problems, relying far too heavily on C instead of the facilities provided by C++. And finally, it only covers techniques any reasonably experienced C++ programmer should already know.

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although

[REBloomfield]

There are a lot of companies still using VS C++ 6.0, and alot don't want to upgrade. The complaints I got from some users for rolling out .NET on their new workstations was unbelievable....

More specifics on VC focus

[binaryDigit]

It would have been nice to have more details on how the book was soooo heavily bent towards VC++. I would assume by the fact that he makes such a big deal out of it that these references are such that it wouldn't do any good for a non VC++ programmer? Are these things specific to the environment (visual studio, debugging, etc) or the OS (win32 api, m$ specific data types, etc).

Overall, I think his review needs a bit more beef (i.e. more examples) vs just saying "I thought it was blah ..." and us having to just take his word for it. Even more so because of the topic and the level at which it is apparently targeted.

Re:Difference between MS and ANSI?

[stratjakt]

Nothing with the language itself.

I assume that the examples use windows-specific libraries and stuff. Like MFC and COM stuff. Or maybe it just discusses the location of various options in the VStudio IDE.

If the book had anything insightful to offer, it really wouldnt matter what flavor implementation the examples are in. I have a really great OpenGL book, for instance, thats full of X-Windows specific examples (like creating and maintaining viewports, etc). Being able to take the ideas to windows is no big thing (cant think of the title of it).

If the book sucks then it sucks because it has nothing to say, not because it uses VC++ as an example. If being VC++ -centric is the only basis for saying it sucks, then the reviewer sucks.

Pot-kettle scenario

[pongo000]

It's not as if VC++ corners the market on non-ANSI compliant C++. I don't know of any compiler that is 100% compliant. Even GCC falls short of 100% ANSI compliance. (Ever try to call the stream manipulator "fixed" in GCC 2.9x? It's an exercise in futility, because you simply won't find it.)

I'm probably the last person on earth to jump to Microsoft's defense, but let's not be so quick to deride their compiler prior to pointing out that these deficiencies exist in every C++ compiler under the sun, in one way or another.

Good C++ programmers realize that there is nothing wrong with using C constructs such as null-terminated strings and printf to get the job done. It's obvious the reviewer needs to get a dose of programming in the real world before attempting to set himself (herself?) up as some sort of C++ expert.