Sams Teach Yourself Visual C++ 5 in 21 Days, Fourth Edition

However, instead of showing what buttons to press in the ClassWizard once, the same 5-pages guide is everywhere, with EVERY example! Sources codes are repeated over and over again in the book. And even text about certain functions/features are repeated (not just part of it) whenever something similar is used in another example.

This book could easily become 1/4 of it's current size if the author didn't pressed copy/paste so many times. It seems that the main goal of the book is to be as large as possible (as many pages as possible). Maybe that's what authors get paid for?


Great book to learn the mechanics of Visual C++   July 12, 1999
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

If you need to learn C++, then get a book on C++. If you need to Learn MFC, then Herbert Schildt's "MFC From The Ground UP" is an excellent book. This "Teach Yourself Visual C++ 5 in 21 Days" book is very good in showing you the mechanics of using the Application and Class Wizards in the Visual C++ compiler from Microsoft. This book is an excellent companion to Herbert Schildt's "MFC From The Ground Up". Learning MFC is the way to go, do not waste time with the old way of programming windows (SDK using Windows API)


A bad choice for beginning Windows programming   June 15, 1999
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book gets two stars only because of the appendix, which was a decent C++ tutorial. However, for learning Windows programming, this book is awful. It uses MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), which is a terrible place to start. Even Microsoft won't use this technology.

I recommend 'Windows NT 4 Programming from the Ground Up', by Herb Schildt. It uses the Windows API functions, which is a must learn for any Windows programmer. Also, I recommend exploring other books for C++ tutorial. Jesse Liberty's 'Learn C++ in 21 days' book is a decent book if you are just getting started. This book should be called 'Learn MFC programming in 21 days', as the current title is quite misleading.


So many pages, so little content   June 3, 1999
 4 out of 5 found this review helpful

I'm an experienced DOS C programmer, and I needed a book to help jumpstart me into Win 95 programming. I skimmed through the contents and thought, "Great, it contains what I want to learn!".

Until I started reading the damned thing, that is. It's not so much the subject matter, as it is the lack of depth which is the problem. The author spends far too much explaining the same stupid steps ("Click here, and here, and here, etc") over and over without going into any relevant detail. The examples are painfully primitive, and trying to create apps with any sort of functionality resulted in lots of fishing in the MSDN Library.

If you're an absolute beginner to Visual C++, then this book will give you a good feel for the basics. Unfortunately, that's about all it contains.


You can find better than this   May 14, 1999
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

When I first saw this book i thought it was great. The begin was easy : Many pictures, all the required steps etc... But when I finished it, I reallised that the best thing I could do was making nice looking windows. I didn 't learn to program in C just draw windows, show MessageBoxes, meaby make a sound (BEEP). The book could be one third in size and give the same amount of info.