Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 15:02:43 JST
From: Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To: gapa83 AT udcf DOT gla DOT ac DOT uk
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: C++ textbooks [was: system() question]

>>>From: Paul Harness <gapa83 AT udcf DOT gla DOT ac DOT uk>

   2). This question shouldn't really be here but can anyone recommend
   a good book for learning C++ which isn't compiler specific (ie
   Borland or Microsoft), and is not too heavy. There are so many to
   choose from these days.

Caveat:  I have strong and not always justified opinions.  Here goes!

DJ mentioned the "Waite group book."  First, they have about three by
now.  Second, I found two of them really "too light" and full of bad
style as well.  (That is, they did not exploit the object-oriented
features of C++.  There were also a couple of real ugly kludges.)  I
threw them out when I moved trans-Pacific (despite their lightness :-)
Books with titles like "User Interfaces in C and C++" are a definite
"Not!"  (especially if they are updates of a book titled "User
Interfaces in C," or worse, "User Interfaces in COBOL").  That
particular book is C++ only in the sense that the author ran the
programs through a couple of C++ compilers to make sure the code still
compiled under C++ (which it had better! there are only a few backward
incompatibilities, none of which belong in textbooks in my opinion).

I like the original "The C++ Programming Language" by Stroustrup.  It
gives you a pretty good feel (in the abstract) for the proper use of
the language, although the examples are not terribly extensive.
Weiner and Pinson's "Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and
C++" is pretty good.  Style is not as good as Stroustrup's, but that's
probably because it's a translation of their "Object-Oriented" series
from Ada or Modula-2 or something like that.  There are many examples,
and a couple of extended projects.  Together these make an excellent
set.  (In fact, I bought them from Zortech when I bought the Zortech
compiler.  Zortech offered them at bookstore price, a bit below list.
This is in itself a recommendation, as they are not at all Zortech
specific, and Zortech offers quite a good manual itself.)  Ellis and
Stroustrup's "C++ Reference Manual" is definitely heavy.

I don't think that Weiner and Pinson is heavy at all, and Stroustrup
is moderate.  But you might want a second opinion:  I read the
O'Reilly "X Windows" manuals at bedtime :-)

Good reading.

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|                           Stephen Turnbull                            |
|     University of Tsukuba, Institute of Socio-Economic Planning       |
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