Book review: Accelerated C++

After having read this book I very much regret coming to C++ from a self-taught Pascal and C background - it could have been so much easier. Many introductory texts on C++ assume a background in one of the procedural languages and consequently start teaching the C subset of C++ first. This is, according to the authors' experience, counterproductive to understanding 'proper' C++ and programming true to it's paradigms and design. Thus they follow the radically new approach of discussing whatever (sometimes advanced) facilities C++ offers to solve a particular problem instead of going from one isolated language feature to the next. This leads to the somewhat unorthodox chapter sequence, which teaches the design of user types (classes) after introducing template functions (a feature many seasoned C++ programmers still don't know how to use effectively) or even stranger: the explanation of pointers and arrays (chapter 10) in terms of the standard library iterators and containers, which have been introduced as early as chapter 3. What I particularly liked are the useful and real world examples, although the book does cover the omni-present 'hello world' program, it otherwise fully delivers on it's promise of teaching 'practical programming by example' (subtitle). Due to this approach and the well constructed exercises at the end of each chapter the book gets the student writing non-trivial, useful programs taking full advantage of advanced C++ library features almost from day one. The authors also lead by example and show proper commenting and programming for flexibility techniques even in the smallest code fragments. This is in refreshing contrast to many an author's crime of showing the 'quick and easy' way first and the 'proper' way later.

If you read The Design and Evolution of C++ you'll soon notice the repeated mentioning of Koenig and Moo as two of the key players in the development of the language. Their in-depth knowledge and experience really shows in this work. Although the book is mainly aimed at beginners, veteran C++ programmers can still profit from it, even if only by loosing some more bad old C habits.