Rao Siddhartha. Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day

7th Edition. — Sams, 2012. — 766 p. — ISBN10: 0672335670, 9780672335679.In just one hour a day, you’ll have all the skills you need to begin programming in C++. With this complete tutorial, you’ll quickly master the basics, and then move on to more advanced features and concepts.Completely updated for the C++11 standard, this book presents the language from a practical point of view, helping you learn how to use C++11 to create faster, simpler, and more efficient C++ applications.
Master the fundamentals of C++ and object-oriented programming
Understand how C++11 features help you write compact and efficient code using concepts such as lambda expressions, move constructors, and assignment operators
Learn best practices and avoid pitfalls via useful Do’s and Don’ts
Learn the Standard Template Library, including containers and algorithms used in most real-world C++ applications
Test your knowledge and expertise using exercises at the end of every lessonThe structure of the book is very good to work in small units - exactly as promised by the title. I handed the book to my son, who is interested in C++ programming. He had some experience programming with friends, but it was not very well structured.
We used the one hour lectures to update specific topics, where he felt gaps in his knowledge without reading the complete book. So what comes in very comfortable for this kind of use is:
- the explanations are very good, clear, easy to understand
- the book is an easy read, because it works very well with different type styles for text, source code etc., with diagrams and text boxes for important stuff like notes and warnings. And it does so, without destructing from the content.
- the examples are very short - but to the point. That is important, so that the learning person does not get destructed by too many details. An additional goody: after each example there is "analysis" section, that explains what should be learned from the sample.
- on the other hand - some details did really surprise me positively, like the description of array initialisation - which is often omitted in beginners booksFor readers, who start at the beginning and work himself/herself through the book, I like to mention, that the book only uses pipe input/output (cin, cout) and introduces strings and other std library classes very early. I think it is important, that modern books do not try to first teach C and then expand to C++ concepts.
The content is very satisfying: from basics, pointers, classes, inheritance and polymorphism it reaches to templates, a very good STL overview to smart pointers, exception Handling and - C++11 standard - Lambda expressions. Also the auto keyword is explained and used appropriately in STL sample code.