Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ |  | Author: Bjarne Stroustrup
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
List Price: $69.99
Buy New: $49.96
as of 11/23/2009 12:30 CST details
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Seller: Sandrasgiftstore
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 42914
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 1272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.3 x 1.9
ISBN: 0321543726
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.133
EAN: 9780321543721
ASIN: 0321543726
Publication Date: December 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An Introduction to Programming by the Inventor of C++ Preparation for Programming in the Real World The book assumes that you aim eventually to write non-trivial programs, whether for work in software development or in some other technical field. Focus on Fundamental Concepts and Techniques The book explains fundamental concepts and techniques in greater depth than traditional introductions. This approach will give you a solid foundation for writing useful, correct, maintainable, and efficient code. Programming with Today’s C++ The book is an introduction to programming in general, including object-oriented programming and generic programming. It is also a solid introduction to the C++ programming language, one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. The book presents modern C++ programming techniques from the start, introducing the C++ standard library to simplify programming tasks. For Beginners–And Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New The book is primarily designed for people who have never programmed before, and it has been tested with more than 1,000 first-year university students. However, practitioners and advanced students will gain new insight and guidance by seeing how a recognized master approaches the elements of his art. Provides a Broad View The first half of the book covers a wide range of essential concepts, design and programming techniques, language features, and libraries. Those will enable you to write programs involving input, output, computation, and simple graphics. The second half explores more specialized topics, such as text processing and testing, and provides abundant reference material. Source code and support supplements are available from the author’s website.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
 Errors; better alternatives October 28, 2009
Roi des Walamas (CA)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Written with not much of a target audience. Beginners will enjoy Walter Savitch's Problem Solving with C++, and people with more background should read Accelerated C++.
Please be wary with those 5-star keeners, they didn't even mention the list of errors in this book.
And yes I pre-ordered this book and returned it within a week after receiving it.
 Thanks, Bjarne October 6, 2009
Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
What can I say? This book is by far the best choice for a "introduction to programming" college class or for self study for anyone serious about learning programming. It offers depth, clearness, vision, wisdom and raw technical skill far beyond the reach of any of its competitors..
What really amazes me is that Stroustrup has managed to write a book that's really, essentially about learning what programming is and how to do it best, using C++ just as a useful tool avoiding the trap of cherishing and exalting his "creature" bringing it to center stage and instead letting it do its quiet work in the background.
Seeing someone with caliber, history, skills and reputation of Stroustrup, who could just go on being revered writing highbrow terse articles, taking the time and exercising the patience necessary to write a beginner book is really a testimonial to the value of this guy.
As an added value, his approach contributes to fight off from the very beginning the confusion that exists in many aspiring ( and unfortunately even is some experts..) programmers about knowing a programming language or knowing the art and science of programming. I find it quite ironical that it should be the job of the creator of a language to underline so effectively the difference between a "language lawyer" and a good programmer.
It is true that the text has many typos and imperfections, as the long errata shows, but being realistic, how many long, clear, detailed, deep technical text don't have mistakes? Even here the author deserves some credit for being so strict and efficient on error correction. Some more proofreading would have surely helped anyhow, that s' a fact, but this issue is largely insignificant compared to the overall quality of the text.
There are only two things that I would have loved to see done in a different way. First, I agree with the idea that introducing polymorphism with the classic toy examples reduces the appreciation for its power and usefulness at first, but I think this fault is inevitably and gradually eliminated later on when the students end up applying the concept to more realistic and complex problems. Presenting it while also teaching computer graphics application concepts might end up making polymorphism seem more complex and obscure than what it actually is, unless the student has already been extensively exposed to the graphics techniques that are being used. I do believe that a clear, immediate, simple even if a bit primitive grasp on a concept is key to fully internalizing it.
I also think that using an established and powerful graphics library like OpenGL would have made the computer graphics section much more fascinating and useful.
What else to say, do yourself a favor and read this book. It has something to tell you, even if you are an expert programmer.
And.. ah yes, thanks Bjarne.
Best book for novice programmers September 4, 2009
John Smith (Monterrey, Mexico)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This books is by far a must have for anyone thinking about becoming a professional software developer. The books aims to address future professional software developers, and therefore can be challenging for novices, specially if you plan on doing self-study. However, it is a true eye opener of what truly programming is all about. What makes this book so good is that contrary to similar beginner's programming books, its focus is not on language details, but rather on principles and on practicing them. The are not blindly enforce to you, but rather you learn them while programming where you understand why each of them is useful and when it is most convenient to apply them. The exercises are certainly not easy but solving real world problems through programming is no easy task.
The books also uses plenty of color, which is also I think a welcome change (instead of using the dull gray and black fonts). This makes it easy to distinguish code from comments and from explanations. The quality the book is great and the extensive use of photographs and graphs makes it easy to read.
Additionally its strong emphasis on principles rather than technicalities makes this book language independent and easy to apply to C#, Java , etc (although C++ is used to in the book).
 Definitely not for beginners August 22, 2009
Stefanos Anastasiou (Germany, Darmstadt)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This books structure is a bit obscure. While you have to appreciate the various techniques being used throughout the book to solve real life problems I wouldn't recommend it to a total beginner. Furthermore it has some subtle errors, for example : page 599 with the list example. There is no way that a beginner could find out why that example is wrong. Additionally just below that example is says :" please convince yourself that this is correct". No it isn't correct. Another example is at page 635 where a pointer is initialised with an array element which is out of bounds and there is no comment that this is potentially dangerour or that the compile wouldn't catch this. I would propose this book to an intermediate C++ user. There it could shine.
 check errata before you buy August 2, 2009
simius (USA)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Check the errata, available on the author's website, before you buy. There are literally HUNDREDS of errors listed already, and while reading I've noticed several that are not even listed yet. So be very wary of these 5-star reviews, and wait for a later printing or perhaps even a later edition.
The content is not bad, though. With most of the errors fixed, this would probably be a 4-star book. Stroustrup's insights on programming are fantastic, even if this isn't the c++ book some would expect.
This edition is not a 5-star book in any case, though. His attempt to teach programming first, and c++ only second or as a tool to accomplish the first, is not entirely successful. The book seems kind of disorganized at times, and that's probably a direct result of those mixed goals. It just doesn't flow as well as one would expect.
It seems likely that experienced programmers will be bored or merely distracted with the "drive by" presentation of c++ scattered throughout a book about programming, and beginners will not be able to appreciate the programming insights because they will be struggling to absorb those and a new, difficult language at the same time. Note in the other reviews that many experienced programmers appreciate the book but imagine it is better for beginning programmers, and many beginners appreciate the book to a certain extent, too, but imagine it is better for experienced programmers. This should tell you something.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
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