Computing Fundamentals With C++: Object-Oriented Programming & Design

Rating:
Summary: WORST BOOK ON THE PLANET.
Review: I picked up this book because it was recommened by a friend.
A friend who used this text book in his class, it makes no
sense whatsoever, Rick Mercer expects a begining programmer
to have pre-devolped computer skills before you pick this book
up. He does a poor job explaining teh basics before his problem
examples appear. And they hardly are about the same chapter just covered. I give this book an honest dis-approval.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent introductory C++ text
Review: I used this book for my Computer Science I course and it was an excellent textbook. All of the concepts are presented in a clear, concise manner and adequate problems (and solutions) are supplied. This book is the best textbook I have used for any course and it an excellent text for anyone learning C++, especially without any background.

Rating:
Summary: Poor book!
Review: This book is terrible in quite a few ways. I know C and C++ (ANSI/ISO C89, C++98) rather well, and this book (which is intended as an introductory read) confused me! I was forced to use this book as my only tutorial/reference/hope in a C++ course I took.

Mr. Mercer's coding style is ancient and belongs next to the first source release of the *NIX game Rogue. His code is more of an aesthetic problem (for me at least) than anything else though.

The orange-highlighted sections(which there are a profound amount of) are an eyesore.

If your professor/instructor pushes this bland book on you, take the course somewhere else where the department has at least better taste.

If this is a personal read, try my recommendation above (Stroustrup) or even Liberty's 21 days book. Honestly!

Rating:
Summary: WORST BOOK ON THE PLANET.
Review: This is a very poor textbook. It does a very bad job of teaching C++, even though it claims to be for beginning students. The organization is totally inapropriate, unless you are already fluent in C. The book begins with advanced topics like functions, quickly jumps into classes, and then sprinkles basic concepts like integral variable types randomly throughout the text. If you are a beginner at C/C++, you will not get a good grounding in the fundamentals of C/C++ programming. This book will lead directly to confusion and frustration. One other problem for the beginner--the example code has numerous errors and often will not compile. Imagine how that makes a beginner feel!

Rating:
Summary: BAD BOOK
Review: While I think this book is a terrible beginner's book, I think that after you've had a CS course or two you'd find this very handy as a reference book. Granted a lot of the more complicated, in-depth stuff is not in here, but I use it occasionally for quick reference, or to refresh my memory on some concept I have temporarily forgotten.