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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
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Title:
Visual C++ 5 Bible
Author:
Paul Yoo&Richard C Leinecker
ISBN:
0 7645 8022 1
Publisher:
IDG
Pages:
906pp+CD
Price:
£36-99
Reviewer:
Francis Glassborow
Subject:
microsoft; advanced c++; MS Windows
Appeared in:
10-2
As books with product names in their titles go this is rather above average. The author dedicates quite a lot of space to such things as what is object-oriented programming and how MFC got to be what it is. I am not entirely sure that the authors fully understand the limitations of MFC as an exemplar of how to use C++ but they certainly manage better than most.

There is also a chapter on the differences between C and C++ which is actually quite important because the original Windows interface was designed in terms of C and those developing MFC clearly are C programmers using C++.

This is not a book from which to learn C++ but if you have some grasp of C++ and want to get a good start with simple Windows programming using VC++ 5.0 you could waste a lot of time looking for something better.

In a sea of bad to mediocre books on the subject area this book stands out as having been written by two authors who want to help their readers to produce something better by understanding what they are doing. I would recommend this book as a first introduction to Windows programming with VC++. Actually it would work pretty well with other development packages that use MFC as it is surprisingly free of IDE specifics (perhaps that is why I like it).