C++ the Core Language: A Foundation for C Programmers

As an undergrad and passionate dbl major, having read many books in C and C++, this book quickly became my friend. It's a good read for those breaking out of C to C++. This book helped me cope with the shock experienced while I was trying to learn ADTs, BSTs, splay trees, skip lists, multiway tries and extendable hashing in the high level programming courses where if you asked questions you'd look dumb. The information in this book made me feel contiguously good while sitting in class. It also served as another perspective and filled in the gaps that the professor and school text left out. Also, pick up Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms in C++ 3rd Edition, which is also a splendid read. Enjoy helping computers understand people!late-

First and foremost you need to already know C in order to use this book. You need to be familiar with the entire language because the authors derive most of their examples by saying: "This is the concept, this is how you would do it in C (to see the basic mechanisms), and now here's how you do it in C++." This book does not hold your hand through this teaching though, they assume you know what you are doing and are following what they are talking about, which is okay by me. I personally don't like books that are really wordy and have alot of information I already know and so I waste my time and money on needless words. There needs to be more books like this one, just tell me the core concepts like what they do and why and the burden for learning and understanding them falls on me not the authors. One complaint that was echoed in an earlier review was the lack of disk I/O commands which are different enough in C++ to necessitate in me having to go to another book to look them up. How about an appendix or website or something like that, sure would be helpful. All in all, a very good book if you don't like all the B.S., fluff, and general page filling that you see on the bookshelves (aka. every book except O'Reily's).

Coming from a C backround, I found this book an excellent treatment of the major concepts of the C++ language. While it is by no means an exhaustive tome, it does provide an excellent transition from C to C++ programming by introducing an overview of C++ fundamentals and concepts. This book is a fine stepping stone on the journey to more advanced C++ and OOP development.

This wasn't the first book I picked up to learn C++. Initially, I thought it couldn't be as useful as "Practical C++" by Mark Terribile (McGraw Hill) which is three times its size. After reading through several grueling chapters, I picked up "C++: The Core Language" and what a difference (night and day)! Satir and Brown have done an excellent job of providing easy to follow examples when presenting structures vs. classes. They have totally demystified C++ for me. I highly recommend this book to anyone transitioning from C to C++.

This is an excellent book for both C programmers making the transition to C++ and for beginning C++ programmers who don't feel that they have had a proper introduction to some of the more complex features of the C++ language. If you are not familiar with OOP, this book provides an excellent introduction. Satir and Brown present in this book the features of C++ that are absolutely essential to know if one is to understand the language: classes, encapsulation, composition, inheritence, constructors/destructors, references, and polymorphism. The information in this book is organized very well. The code snippits are short, to-the-point, and easy to understand. Also, like all O'Reilly books, the typography is beautiful and clean. The only important areas of the core language left out of this book (which I feel should have been included in the core language) were in-depth discussions of the "static" and "const" keywords.