Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good introduction to Visual C++
Review: For those who have had exposure to C++ but are not experts, and who need to learn Visual C++, this book would be a good choice. The book emphasizes the Microsoft Foundation Classes, since it is a Microsoft Press book, and the author includes more background material in C++ for those who need it. But lest the reader get bogged down in the intricacies of C++ , the author includes an introduction to Visual C++ in the first chapter of the book. It is assumed, naturally, that the reader will be in front of a computer with Visual Studio open while reading the book, and inputing code or navigating in it as the author requests in the book. Readers who intend to program business applications in C++ will find the book very useful. At the present time, scientific programming in C++ is on the rise, and even though Visual C++ and its GUI environment may be overkill for these applications, this situation is changing, especially in areas such as computational biology and financial engineering. Readers in these fields are frequently faced with creating GUI environments for their applications, and so Visual C++ can be of help in this regard. Chapters 2-5 are an overview of C++ and object-oriented programming and can be skipped by readers who already have the necessary background. The material is pretty standard, and the author gives suggestions on how to program more efficiently in C++. Readers without any knowledge at all of C++ might find the reading somewhat difficult, as the author does not give an in-depth presentation of the relevant concepts in C++. A fairly good discussion of the scoping rules in C++ is given, along with pointers, MFC pointer conventions, classes, etc. The author begins in chapter 6 to discuss the main goal of the book, which is to introduce the reader to Windows programming using the Microsoft Foundation Class Library. He emphasizes first the role of message passing via the message handlers, and the use of the MFC to write handler functions instead of window procedures to process window messages. The author is aware of the difficulty in learning the MFC and its consequent applications to Windows programming, and so he spends a fair amount of time looking at the MFC class hierarchy. The AppWizard is used early on to perform elementary coding examples. The author discusses the document/view architecture in terms of the separation of the data from how it is used; this being done with the class Cdocument for holding the data, and CView for viewing the data. This is an approach that characterizes the object-oriented origins of the MFC. Those readers who have programmed Windows applications using C will notice the absence of the WinMain function, this being done automatically by the MFC. The author summarizes the relationships between the MFC and the Win32 API for this kind of reader. this being done automatically by the MFC. The author summarizes the relationships between the MFC and the Win32 API for this kind of reader. The next several chapters consider the use of the AppWizard and the MFC to a drawing application. Those interested in developing sophisticated scientific or financial applications might find this dull reading, but with some amount of patience one can get through it. In addition, the author introduces the Visual C++ debugger, and so for this reason alone the reading of these chapters might be profitable for such a reader. Also, the design of a Visual C++ application that contains a large amount of graphs will require knowledge of the tools discussed here. The last part of the book concentrates on various ancillary topics in MFC that the author felt were necessary to use it more proficiently. The author includes a useful diagram of the MFC view class hierarchy in this regard. He also discusses the serialization of objects, of crucial importance to those who are needing persistence in their applications, particulary in Web-based applications and database programming. The most useful discussions for me in this part were the chapters on dialog boxes, controls, and toolbars
Rating: 
Summary: Best Starter VC++ Book
Review: I have really liked the way the author Chuck Sphar actually goes about creating the MyDraw Application right from scratch. The first 200 pages of the book teach C++, and the other 500 teach VC++, concentrating on MFC. A real good book to buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very good...
Review: I picked up this book as a average C and JAVA programmer looking to move onto C++ and the windows platform. I even have some C++ background. I was disapointed to say the least. The author never gives a clear description of how different sections interact, instead providing steps in such tiny increments that the broad picture never emerges. I followed along step by step and still have no clear understanding of how C++ programming works in windows. I would agree with the majority of other reviewers. This book is simply not useful for learning C++ nor does it contain enough information to make a good resource.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad!
Review: I'm learning Visual C++ 6.0 and needed some books to get started. Learn Visual C++ 6.0 has not been of any help. The book and source is nothing worth you can find these in the MSDN help as well! If you're planning to buy this book, please think twice before doing so!
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I'm stunned at how many people hate this book. He walks you through it slow and easy, gives you lots of analogies (like the food tray/stack & heap analogy) and explains it out nice and simple. Sorry people, C++ is hard! it's not gonna BE a cakewalk, but this book makes it easier than most i've seen. This book gives you in depth knowledge about c++. If you want c++ for dummies go get that, this book requires you to think, but it pays off, and it's somewhat enjoyable!
Rating:
Summary: English is good, Code is bad
Review: If one could extract Mr. Sphar's descriptions of what MFC is and how applications can use it to interact with Windows, the result would be well worth reading. Unfortunately, this is only a small part of what this book attempts to do. The sample code does not conform to basic standards of good programming (in variable names, style, and clarity), making it difficult to read and grating on the nerves. Since Mr. Sphar attempts to teach by example, this is a critical shortcoming. In addition, when the discussion turns to the inner workings of C (I'm thinking here about the section on pointers and function arguments), Mr. Sphar spends too much time on technical minutia and too little on building intuition. The O'Riley _Practical Programming_ books do a better job of teaching C and C++, and I'm going to look for a better introduction to MFC.
Rating:
Summary: Very impressive
Review: It is the only book I know of on C++ that gives a broad picture of this difficult subject.At first it seemed like it dealt with trivial problems but after reading it all(and believe me it was not an easy task to comprehend it !)I was amazed how well thought out and through out it was.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Book
Review: The author says this book can be used by people who are new to any C programming. That was a crock, the author was obiviously just trying to get people buy this book. I had to take a C class at school before I could attempt to understand the bablings of this author. Now that I understand it I get to the 4th Chapter and BAM. He spits out about 100 lines of code that have NOTHING to do with the preceding 3 Chapters. Also, I found stuff like this very amusing "If you use Type Specifiers to access Pointers, you may run into a problem. By the way, we'll discuss Type Specifiers and Pointers in Chapter 6". Why the hell even say that buddy? If your new to C then DON'T buy this book...
Rating:
Summary: Very poorly laid out, many important points glossed over
Review: The problem with this book is shown in the attitude of Andrew the reviewer that gave it five stars. He says C++ is hard. It is not hard, it is complex. This book glosses over important points like constructors and then wings off in a totally different direction to explain there is an error in the compiler and how to correct it by changing ZI to Zi. He doesn't explain how we would normally do something, but rather jumps right to the 'advanced' way to do something, I assume in an effort to dazzle us with his ability. This book is a bad trip for someone actually trying to get the basics of C++. Go else where.
Rating:
Summary: Tangent filled garbage
Review: This book is terrible. It is so bad, you would be better off NOT reading it. It is organized so poorly that I felt stupid because I didn't understand what they were talking about. It's this type of book that gives the C++ learning curve a bad name. I have since found some other excellent books and have picked it right up. C++ isn't difficult to learn at all if you have the right resources.
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