Who's Afraid of C++? [With *]

by Steve Heller

Book Overview

This volume is intended to teach the reader to program in C++, assuming no prior knowledge of programming. The method is to explain the principles of good programming, and then illustrate each of them... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0123390974
• ISBN13: 9780123390974
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Length: 508 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I wish all technical books were written as clearly as this.

From now on, whenever someone asks me how to learn C++, this is the first book I will give them. I've read several books on learning C++ and this is by far the best I've encountered. Definitely worth the price of admission!The book is well written and contains lots of examples. The tone is very casual, which I found made it an easy read. The book includes questions and comments from a person named Susan, who acted as a "test reader" for the book. (Susan had no previous programming background.) Throughout the book there is an ongoing Q & A style dialogue between Mr. Heller and Susan. I found this to be a great way of reinforcing the material. Also, the dialogue is rather entertaining at times.I might add that I've been programming on and off in various languages for the last 17 years. And although Heller's book is written for the novice, he covers things so thoroughly that even programming concepts that I've known for years became more clear to me. For example, the brief explanation on how programs are converted from a high level language to machine instructions is one of the clearest explanations I've ever read.

Great book because it's readable

I've read some of the more technical language references for C++, but I'd always end up just using them to look up stuff when I got stuck. This book (and the first Who's Afraid...) both have a casual and clear tone that makes complex and abstract concepts seem to make perfect sense if you slow down and especially if you read the questions asked by the "student". About 1/2 to 2/3 of the time I had the same question. Some people won't like the fact that it's not purely a technical book, but a little story goes a long way in making a book interesting enough to read through instead of wade through.

The long-awaited sequel - demanding, but highly recommended!

This is the long-awaited sequel to "Who's Afraid of C++?," in which Steve Heller introduced the unique idea of not just teaching, but learning by example, inviting the reader to follow along with Susan, a total novice to programming. By the end of that volume, we had gone from the basic mechanics of writing and compiling simple C++ programs to an understanding of classes and object-oriented programming. Steve and Susan showed that these "advanced" concepts, approached from the standpoint of a novice, were really no more difficult than other programming issues like data types and flow control, usually regarded as more "basic." Tantalizingly, the first volume seemed to end just when the story started getting really good - when the reader just started getting a glimpse of the full power of C++.This second volume immediately plunges ahead into new conceptual territory, laying out in the first three chapters what will become the core of the book - the ideas of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Building upon the classes developed in the first volume for the "grocery store inventory" scenario, the conceptual leaps from object-oriented classes, to inherited classes, to virtual functions and polymorphic objects occur so fast I almost felt assaulted by them. In fact, by the end of the third chapter, I had to put the book down, go back and reread the last 100 or so pages of "Who's Afraid of C++?" and then come back to the beginning of chapter 3. On the second reading, it clicked!The remaining four chapters flesh out the ideas presented in the first three, showing the development of a small home inventory application, with some interesting digressions on the Year 2000 problem and on the nature of software development in general. Although much of this material is somewhat tricky and even elusive, especially when objects begin "morphing" into one another, I never found a line of code in the many listings that I could not understand for want of adequate explanation. (In fact, some apparently simple lines generate many pages of explanation.) The intricacy of this, in fact, lends this book a very different flavor than that of "Who's Afraid of C++?" Whereas that volume was more of a wide-eyed learning adventure, in the sequel, we find out that there are indeed plenty of pitfalls, tricks, and subtle errors to be afraid of in C++. Instead of the almost playful banter between expert and novice in which the expert learns as much as the novice (after all, by the beginning of this book Susan isn't, strictly speaking, a novice), here we are led, gently and carefully, by a mentor through some complicated and treacherous passages. Heller is even at great pains to present a method of using polymorphism in which pointers are "hidden" from the user of polymorphic classes (as opposed to the more usual "dangerous polymorphism").As a result, I feel that should I ever want to retrace the steps of this journey and de

Who's Afraid? Not Me -- No More!!

"Who's Afraid of C++?" really helped me come on board to C++ -- FAST! I've been developing application software for a number of years. Several years ago I started using C. Recently I began coding with C++. I was having trouble with some of the concepts and usage of classes, inheritance, polymorphism, templates, etc., etc. I was spending a lot of time spinning my wheels -- and who has time to spin their wheels?!! Who's Afraid of C++? gave me the "info push" I needed to get going. It provided the basics in a straight forward manner. It also had good, solid code examples. The book did not bog me down with the details of all the techie nuances available in C++. It gave me the information I needed to start using C++. Once I got going with C++ I found concepts that were hazy started making sense. The "light buld" and "oh I get it..." happened more and more! Boy, did that feel good!! Who's Afraid gave me the C++ foundation that helped me move along to more advance C++ techniques; and it's let me wade into Steve Heller's, "Efficient C/C++ Programming, Smaller, Faster, Better."

A great book for people new to C++ and programming.

Who's Afraid of C++ is a very original book. It's different from all the other programming books out today by taking difficult concepts and making them easy to understand. Steve Heller, the author, narrates his book by speaking to a novice who has never programmed. As one might expect, the things that the novice, Susan, finds difficult we too would probably share the same concern. Steve Heller helps Susan with her problems by explaining in simple language the theory and practical application behind the difficult concepts. This is only one of the things that makes this book so unique. There are a lot of other great things about this book including : - a very thorough, easy to understand glossary on C++ programming and hardware jargon. - the closing chapter clarifies the level of C++ programming he has covered and reveals that his soon to be next book will take us to more advanced topics in this very popular programming language. - A section on hardware fundamentals. - A C++ compiler ! ! ! If you are new to programming and want to learn about C++, what are you waiting for? This book is a must! Best of all, you save $100 because it comes with a free C++ compiler.