Introduction to C++ for Engineers and Scientists

Rating:
Summary: Excellent learning source for novices in C++ programming
Review: I found this book to be very useful for learning C++, particularly since I am an utter novice whan it comes to programming. I found that this book gives a quick and easy introduction to C++ concepts. Early in the book, the reader is taught to do things that are very useful to scientists and engineers such as reading and generating data files, loops etc. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to develop simple routines quickly without reading painfully large tomes that get around to data files only around page 1000. The only minor negative is that this is a book that beginners will outgrow very soon. Also, there are some issues are not explained in any depth except that this is how it is done. But then again this book is only an introduction to C++ and a excellent one at that. Well done Prof. Etter, I survived Phase 1 in C++ as a result of this book!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book for the Beginner and Intermediate Programm
Review: I thought that the title was a bit grandiose. I would have thought a better title would have been: Introduction To C++ For Technical Applications. It does not have the depth of coverage for professional engineers and scientists.It would be ideal for budding engineers/scientists at high school, laboratory technicians and drafts persons etc. who are required to do complex, tedious and repititious computations. The author does not assume any knowledge of computers, programming or C++. A high school knowledge of algebra, trigonometry, inequalities and logarithms is all that is required. The text is easy to understand and is interspersed with style tips, bugs in programs, review questions with answers from which the reader can determine if he/she has understood the text and programming exercises of a technical nature. I was surprised that the chapter on Selection Statements, the Switch construct was omitted, also in the chapter on Loop Structures that the calculation converting degrees to radians was inside the loop. The chapter on Programmer-Defined Functions only discusses passing variables by value and omitting passing by reference, which means that the programmer can only return a single value. The section on disk file input/output is the best I have read, although it is marred by the fact that the author does not give a complete drive/directory/file example, so the reader would not know that a double back slash is required. An additional chapter on two dimensional arrays should have been included, since computations involving matrices are common place in engineering and science. I give the book 4 stars for the type of reader it is directed to. A useful companion to this book would be Schaum's Outlines Programming with C++ by J. R. Hubbard Phd, ISBN 0-07-135346-1 to fill in th gaps. Anyone using a Borland compiler must enter the following lines: cin >> "Press any key to continue"; getchr(); before the return statement, otherwise the fruits of the budding programmer's endevour will disappear before he/she has time to see it.