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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Scott Meyers

[j_kenpo]

I've actually come to like Scott Meyer's books, particularly Effective C++ and More Effective C++. These books are aimed at C++ programmers to correct common mistakes, and C programmers making the migration to C++ (hence the first few chapters in Effective C++, prefer new and delete to malloc and free, etc.) The only other C++ books I really use regularly are the STL guide and C++ From the Ground Up. All of these are Ansi C++ oriented (at least there hasn't been anything that didn't work on a Ansi C++ compatible compiler). If a book is aimed at Visual C++, then it should say that in the title. Id be curious to hear what other books people use for reference (besides man pages).

Re:Difference between MS and ANSI?

[yamla]

I did try to point out that the book was bad even for Visual C++ programmers. It uses old-style C++ (#include , for example), ignores valuable contributions to C++ such as the STL and the standard string class, and generally provides nothing a decent C++ programmer should not already know.

It isn't so much that the examples are targetted for Visual C++ 6.0, it is that the techniques themselves are. It is no good telling me, 'If you set eax from assembly, disable warning 4035' unless I am using Visual C++ on an ix86-compatible processor. It just doesn't translate to any other platform.

Plug

[nycsubway]

This is time for a selfish plug. but an honest plug.

About a half year ago i was doing some C++ programming, which i haven't been doing as much as of as i'd like to, and I had an idea. It seemed each time I started programming something in C++, I would have forgotten some of the details of the language. I wanted a reference card for C++. I searched all over the internet for free ones, and even some I had to pay for. but there weren't any!

So i wrote one. It includes all the common syntax, plus a lot of advanced reference such as library functions.

gbook.org/refcard [gbook.org]

This post is going to get modded down, but I wanted to say how much I like the concept of a one sheet reference card better than reference books.

For MSVC development

[Timesprout]

If MSVC is your only environment try here [codeguru.com] for tips and pointers. They cover a lot of other stuff as well. For pure C++ then as others have said go with Myers / Stroustrup etc

Re:Difference between MS and ANSI?

[Gortbusters.org]

When I took an object oriented course a couple semesters ago, it used C++. I started out the course using gcc-2.96 on Redhat 7.3. Unfortunately, the teaching assitant was using MS visual studio 6. There were no compiler stipulations in the syllabus for the course either.. by the time the first project got graded, there was a ton of confusion.

0 compile errors on gcc, and like 50 in VS. I found out that where Linux let me to declare the std namespace in the main file where I had all my includes, VS wanted the namespace declared in every file to use anything from the STL. There was also other little stuff, but nothing tooo bad.

I couldn't spend all semester like this, so I picked up a copy of VS. After using it for the rest of the semester, my conclusion was: bleh. It was okay, but nothing to write home about and I missed the command line tools.

Compatibility nightmare

[iamacat]

.NET uses it's own C runtime (msvcrt70.dll) and MFC DLLs. Worse, VC6.0-compiled libraries are not compatible with new runtime. Even DLLs that use their own runtime/MFC will not work, because MFC data structures have changed and malloc'ed memory blocks returned by the DLL can not be freed by the application, since there are two different version of heap management code. If you use any third-party component in your program (condmgr.dll anyone?), welcome to hell.

For all this trouble, you get a compiler that isn't much improved. It still tells you to call Microsoft customer support at the first non-trivial use of C++. It still doesn't like non-inline template specialization.

worst book review ever

[NixterAg]

This is, by far, the worst book review ever on Slashdot. The book gets a 2/10 from someone who obviously has no use for Visual C++, which tens of thousands of professionals use daily. His primary gripe seems to be that the cover misrepresented what was inside. What kind of idiot spends $50 on technical book without examining its contents? I'm likely to read at least 20-30 pages of the book before purchasing to make sure it fits my needs and most programmers I know are the same way. I think the primary problem here is that the reviewer wasn't a member of the authors' intended audience and thus it had no value to him. I haven't even heard of the book before seeing this review and the reviewer might be right, it might totally suck. The point is though, noone should take his word for it because he didn't have any use for the book in the first place.

There are dozens of books that are more than suitable for the reviewer and his expectations. When the reviewer fails to properly identify the book's audience and it's value to that audience, they aren't doing anyone any favors. What kind of review do you think a romance novelist would give to Stroustrop's C++ book? They obviously aren't the audience the author intended and as a result, their review isn't worth the paper they wrote it on. If you get a book and find that you aren't in the intended audience, you are doing a severe injustice by providing a review. You won't be able to fully ascertain how useful the book actually is and thus won't be able to provide an insightful review. I don't ask my wife for her opinion on programming books and she doesn't ask for my opinion when it comes to interior decorating. In the same vein, I don't want Chris Thompson's opinion on this book.

Re:Mmmm. Tasty O'Reilly...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "Practical C++ Programming" by Steve Oualline. And I agree, it's an excellent book, a little preachy on style but I consider that better than teaching no style or inconsistent style.