Introduction

Books published by Murach Publishing are very comprehensive and easy to understand. I had reviewed several of their books and found them very useful. Murach C++ 2008 thoroughly examines all aspects of C++ programming language with Visual Studio 2008. The book is divided into 10 chapters spread over four sections.

Inside the Book

The first section provides detailed coverage of Visual Studio 2008. You will learn the steps required to design a WinForm project with special reference to the code and testing of the application. The chapters in section 2 enable you to learn how to work with numeric, string data, control structures such as If-Else, Methods, Event handlers, Exceptions, Data validation, Arrays, Collections and Dates. The author also devotes a chapter which helps you to debug a Visual Studio project.

Section 3 examines the usage of classes, indexers, delegates, events, operators including inheritance, interfaces and generics. The final section delves deep into the usage of files, data streams and XML including legacy C and native C++ code. The author has covered each concept using Visual Studio 2008, which I hope will help developers to get started with C++ coding. It would have been helpful if the author had covered some of the advanced features of Visual Studio 2008, such as Refactoring.

The author has followed a uniform approach to discuss concepts. Each section begins with a detailed explanation, code samples, screenshots followed by description in bulleted format. I feel that it will be very helpful for beginners in their quest to learn the concepts quickly and easily. From my point of view, advanced developers can make use of the book as a ready reference material.

I would recommend the book for developers who would like to spend at least two months to learn C++. I think that computer training centers could use the book as learning material for courses spanning 3-6 months. You can download sample chapters and complete source code examples in ZIP format from the publisher's website. Moreover, Murach also provides a separate CD for instructors, which contains PowerPoint slides, solutionsfor the exercises in the book, student projects and model solution and test banks in ExamView, Blackboard, and RTF formats.

About the Reviewer

Anand Narayanaswamy (Microsoft MVP and Technical Editor of ASPAlliance.com) is the author of Community Server Quickly. He works as an independent consultant based in Trivandrum, India and runs www.learnxpress.com and www.dotnetalbum.com

About the Book

Title	Murach's C++ 2008
Author	Prentiss Knowlton
Publisher	Murach Publishing
ISBN - 13	978-1-890774-54-7
Edition	2009
Pages	570
Price	US $52.50 (Publisher Price: $36.75)
Rating	****