Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 17
 Many reviewers might be missing the point February 4, 2001
Martin Dulberg (Raleigh, NC USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is a textbook, not a reference book. Text books teach, reference books provide convenient lookup. As a teacher of large programming classes, I can appreciate the authors approach to teaching programming. Students with no background do MUCH better with a black box approach to functions. Use it first then learn how to make it yourself is a far better approach than getting students lost in all of the details no matter how important the details are. There's plenty of time later in the semester (and subsequent courses) to master the details. For most students, the CS1 course is NOT about becoming a programmer, it's about learning analytical problem solving skills. The book does an excellent job of addressing the pedegogical concerns of the CS1 course. One may of course have quibbles with the order that things are presented of course. I personally prefer to introduce functions before classes. But this is a religious issue more than anything else. There are many different ways to do things that all lead to a successful conclusion.
 negative points would be given if possible November 19, 2000
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book has so many things wrong with it that i cannot explain every reason why it is such a terrible book. To begin, this book is very disoriented, it is so unorganized because of the way the author introduces topics. He teaches functions before he ever goes into looping or even the basic built-in types like CHAR.He never uses variables until after talking about functions. He creates a lot of his own classes and uses that instead of the true C++ standard library. Instead of vectors, he uses something called tvectors which leaves you confused in what you should use in general. He doesn't talk about the type char until the later chapters. Any beginner who has never seen C++ would be total confused and anyone who has exprience with C++ would feel more dumb after reading this book because all it does is confuse you. My teacher heavily praises this book and goes word by word on his projects. Everyone in my class hates this book, so it is not just me. Unless you are forced to buy this book because of a course, DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF TRASH. and if you do have a teacher using this book, change your course, because trust me, you WILL NOT learn C++ with this book. It would only make you want to change your major from Computer Science to something else. I don't know who approved this book, but they must have been drunk.
O'Sullivan's review is dead wrong October 26, 2000
Bryan W Tighe (Arlington, VA United States)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I am a former student of Dr. Astrachan at Duke, and his goal in writing this book (if you read the introduction above) is to teach C++ to students who have NO programming experience in any language. O'Sullivan in his previous review seems to think that C is a better programming language than C++ (I'm not saying C is inferior, I'm just saying that they are different languages and should be treated as such). O'Sullivan also has the perspective of someone who already knows a programming language, and therefore would not benefit from a beginner's book. O'Sullivan also clearly missed the point of C++ and OOP, as he says that programmers should learn how printf() and other low-level constructs work. But why? C++ and OOP totally make those constructs useless, and teaching these constructs to BEGINNERS will only muddle the topic further. The books O'Sullivan reccomends are all C books, and anyone interested in OOP or C++ should not bother with them. Perhaps when O'Sullivan graduates from high school, he will understand that there is a wealth of Object Orientation in C++ waiting for him in the real world. My advice to anyone thinking of purchasing this book: if you are new to programming, this is the book you want! It is informative, educational, clear, and not at all confusing. Is it a reference book? Not really, so once you know the language, you should perhaps purchase another book for use as reference. But for learning programming from the start, this is the book you want.
Don't buy this book if you either... October 7, 2000
Patrick O'Sullivan
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
A) Have any computer programming background. OR B) Don't have any programming background at all.This is a horrible book for beginning computer science because it uses C++. I'm not putting down C++ at all. Here's the problem though. C++ allows the user to take certain things for granted, such as overloading. "cout" is just some magical thing that works. If we were using C, we would have to use printf(), or even better, puts() which would make the beginning programmer learn where his stuff goes when he puts it on the screen. I took AP Computer Science for the heck of it in high school and was presented with this book. Already, being a C programmer, I laugh at it. The teacher, with a little help from the book I guess (I don't pick it up for reference ever), emphesizes the "black box" which means for instance, "We don't care how sqrt() works, we just know it does." This is wrong when you're teaching computer science. Computer science has to have theory and the nitty gritty for it to be taught well. This book also stresses itself as revolving around OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Well, familiarize yourself with object theory and you will learn that C++ isn't 100% kosher OOP. "True" OOP doesn't have a main function. Another gripe I have is that the programs are lame and don't serve the user any real purpose in making them. One more gripe is that Astrachan's code is sloppy and it looks like he wrote the book and then threw code together in a cram to get it to the editor. His formatting style changes depending on what code you're reading, and this is very annoying. This is not a good book for a beginner, nor anyone advanced. Buy A First Book Of ANSI C (ISBN 0314073361), The C Programming Language (ISBN 0131103709), and then if you really wanna learn C++, buy O'Reilly's C++: The Core Language (ISBN 156592116X) which is a book specifically designed for programmers moving from C to C++. Also consider Sedgewick's Algorithms in C or C++. I have them all and they are all good books. However, DON'T buy these books if you need pictures in the margins telling you why 2^3 is 8.
Very helpful September 29, 2000
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book was the first one that I was able to understand of all the books I read. Its a college book so you know its good. The first few chapters made it possible for me to understand other books on C++, and to understand where the other books failed. I'm not finished it all yet, but If you have the money, get it. Or try the Library. I wish I had it 2 years ago when I gave up.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 17
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