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Visual C++ Object-Oriented Programming by M Andrews Recommended

ISBN: 0-672-30150-4       Publisher: Sams       Pages: 1068pp & disk       Price: £?

Categories:   microsoft     object oriented

Reviewed by Nick Ajderian in C Vu 6-1 (Nov 1993)

The book is a lot less targeted than its title might suggest. Most of the book is taken up with explaining how C++ differs from C. Amongst the topics covered is use of const, references, scope and overloading and it's not until chapter 11 that classes are discussed in any detail. Where it differs from other products, the VC++ implementation (or omission) of a feature is discussed briefly (and normally uncritically) but it's not until Chapter 22 (page 800ish) that Andrews explains how to create and display a dialog box in VC++.

In spite of the massive production team, a few typos (and worse, syntactical inversions) have crept into the book. I looked in vain for the EGIN_MESSAGE_MAP macro mentioned in the index and I had to read the discussion of the difference between MacApp and MFC several times before coming to the conclusion that it was just plain jumbled. Then again, that was in the section "Zen and the art of C++ programming"
The underlying theme of many of the examples is the dungeons and dragons "Wrath of Zaltar" game. The fact that in 24 chapters and 1000 pages he doesn't come close to producing a playable game demonstrates both the complexity of MFC and Andrew's commendable application to getting the fundamentals of using the MFC 2 classes correct.

A thorough but not over-wordy introduction to C++, MFC and Visual C++. Although it contains much that is not specific to VC++, considering the number of C++ books around I don't think I would recommend it as general reading. If you've not programmed for Windows before, you will definitely need Petzold as well. However, unlike the other book I've reviewed recently (the VC++ runtime library reference), if you have VC++ this would be a book that you could profitably read whilst waiting for the latest version of your killer app. to compile - after you've finished War and Peace, that is. Recommended.