Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day (6th Edition) at Dominant Systems Book Store

Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day

In just one hour a day, you’ll have all the skills you need to begin programming in C++. With this complete tutorial, you’ll quickly master the basics and then move on to more advanced features and concepts:

Master the fundamentals of C++ and object-oriented programming
Learn some of the more advanced features of C++
Learn the Standard Template Library and the containers and algorithms used in most real-world C++ applications
Learn how to build effective programs in C++ with hands-on exercises
Get expert tips on implementing C++ in the corporate environment

Learn on your own time, at your own pace

No previous programming experience required
Learn C++ and object-oriented design, programming, and analysis
Write fast and powerful C++ programs, compile the source code, and create executable files
Understand the latest ANSI standard
Use the Standard Template Library’s algorithms and containers to write feature-rich yet stable C++ applications
Develop sophisticated programming techniques with functions, arrays, variables, and smart pointers
Learn to expand your program’s power with inheritance and polymorphism
Master the features of C++ by learning from programming experts
Works with all ANSI C++ compilers

Customer Reviews & Comments
I'm not a big fan of "Teach yourself X in Y amount of time" books. There, I've said it. Most of these books have their timing wrong anyway, you can't learn to be a world class polo player in 24 hours, you can't build your own ocean liner in 21 days and you can't be a professional hula champion in six easy lessons. And you won't be able to teach yourself C++, at least not enough to be of any use, in an hour a day. But this book works. Forgetting the one hour a day promise, the book works very well. Learning C++, or just C, or any programming language from scratch is hard. Even harder if you have to learn the concepts of programming, loops, branches, pre and post tests and the whole object oriented thing. This book doesn't make it simple, but it does make the process more logical. And it breaks the process into small steps, most easily learned in an hour. I'm not a C++ guru. I've used Visual Basic for just about ever and only written a few minor projects in C. I can print my name to the screen in C++, but that's about it. Or at least it was until I started this book. Walking through the first section, aptly titled "The Basics," I was able to get moderately familiar with C++ in such a way that I'll retain the knowledge pretty well. Quite obviously I'll get rusty if I don't use the new skills on a routine basis, but learning them was straight forward and well presented. The tutorials are backed by example code that worked fine in several different compilers and the analysis of what the code is doing is very effective at teaching the concepts as well as the specifics. I do have a few minor complaints about the book. For one, it almost seems like two books. The first two thirds teaches C++ fundamentals and Object Oriented Programming quite effectively. But then the book almost changes direction and dives into the Standard Template Library. To me it's almost as if the book went a few hundred pages long. I suppose with the trend to produce forest-leveling technical books rather than specific shorter, more to the topic books, that this is to be expected. But I'd rather pay $50 for a 120 page book with only the information I needed than $20 for a thousand page book that scattered that same 120 pages across hundreds of pages of irrelevant, at least to me, material. On the plus side, this book's 800 or so pages aren't padded with repetitive material or fluff just to meet a page count. The contents may not all be relevant to me, but they are likely relevant to someone else who might buy the book. I tend to see quizzes and exercises in a book like this as extra paper I didn't need, but a student with this book as a course text would find the material appropriate. Even for me the exercises provoked a thinking process not contained in the lesson itself. And in the end, you can't truly learn anything, whether it takes an hour a day or ten, unless you use the knowledge outside of the written example. If you want to learn C++, at your own pace, this is an excellent book to have.

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