Inside Visual C++: With CDROM

I'm a big fan of examples and this book has plenty of them. Also all examples are shown how to develop using the Class Wizard which is what most programmers will be using these days. I use this book 10 times more than all of my C++ books. This is a must have for your typical programmer.

If you are trying to learn Windows programming using the MFC library, then this book is a great place to start. The book covers a lot of material and discusses how to put Visual C++ to work for you in the process. This book does, however, move fairly quickly. It is easy to follow and understand, but it sometimes skips some details that may be of interest. Therefore, I recommend using this book to learn MFC, but also have a copy of Jeff Prosise's "Programming Windows with MFC." Prosise's book is hands-down the best MFC book on the market, but it is so detailed that it is hard to read it from cover-to-cover. So, when you read this book and feel like you want to know more about the topic you just read, look to Prosise's book for more information. The two books make a great team.

The most important aspect of this book is that it is very readable. You can get through it cover to cover. The simple fact is that MFC is too big a topic for one book, or one author. I've had to use three books to learn it. My method has always been the same.1. Find a book to read just to get a high level idea of what is going on. Normally, about a quarter to half way the high level book, it becomes superficial. In this case, that book was Teach Yourself Visual C++ in 21 Days.2. Start reading a more complete book that will tell me what is going on. Originally, I started reading the Prosise book. Don't get me wrong, Prosise is a great reference, but its too detailed. MFC is too broad to learn every nuck and cranny. I shifted over to Programming VC++. It's perfect. It goes over every thing I need to know. If I need more detail, I use Prosise for reference. But this is the book I read cover to cover.MFC is tough. This book might not teach you everything. But it will give you enough information to know what to look up in Prosise.

I must admit that this book is probably not the best one on the market. It is not very usable by beginners. My own experience of self taught MFC programmer goes back to windows 3.1, when I tried to port a little shareware program I developped under Visual Basic 3 to Visual C++ 1.5. It took me about one year to do so. Now, I routinely develop applications for technical purposes. ( Man-machine interface evaluation software for silicon chips). But here I want to emphasize one very important point about the original author. Without his dedication and patience, I would certainly have stopped everything. On the original edition of this book, Inside Visual C++ 1.5, there was his email address. And when I came to a dead end , I send to him queries, and he answered me ! His help was unvaluable to me. This was my two cents contribution to the memory of an author who really cared about his readers.

I Just picked up the book from a half price bookstore. It's one of the best buys I made in recent months. The writing style is concise and their explanations extremely clear. A "must buy" for anyone who wants to dive into Win32 programming using MFC. However this is not a book for everyone. It is ideal for intermediate programmers. I'm an experienced C/C++ programmer who wants a quick way of learning VC++ and the Visual Studio 6.0 Development Environment. And this is THE BOOK! I would also recommend the book for seasoned XWindows/Motif programmers who need to learn the popular MFC Windows application framework for porting their applications. It covers in breadth (but not in great details) many topics related to the Win32 environment: Document-View Architecture, ActiveX, COM, ATL, ODBC, Winsock, etc. In essence, it gives a nice capability overview of the VC++ 6.0 development tools.Like some negative reviews posted earlier, I have to warn that the ideal readers should have some prior knowledge about Win32 API or at least some prior exposure to event-driven programming style (Smalltalk experience, also a plus.) A nice companion book for Win32 programming is: "Windows 98 Programming from the Ground Up" by Herbert Schildt. It gives C programmers better understanding of the Win32 API underlying MFC.This is NOT an introductory text, NOR an in-depth reference. It is a comprehensive tutorial that is extremely well written and enjoyable for seasoned programmers who are new to the Win32 environment. I can't wait to start learning DirectX SDK after reading this book. :-)