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An Introduction to Programming Using C++ by Kenneth Mansfield Jr & James Antonakos Not Recommended

ISBN: 0-13-262841-4       Publisher: Prentice Hall       Pages: ?pp       Price: £?

Categories:   beginner's c++

Reviewed by Kevlin Henney in C Vu 9-6 (Sep 1997)

Well, in terms of latest features you can forget it with this book: no feature that has been introduced since the late eighties is covered. In fact, on closer inspection, few of the features that were introduced before this time are included either: no use of references, no const, no declaration of for loop variables, no function overloading, and so the list dribbles on.

Hang on then, isn't this a book on C? Well, yes, but not a good one. It is clear that the authors have taken their course on C and rebadged it as C++. A couple of concessions here and there, such as the use of cout and cin (apparently keywords...); inline gets a mention, but is then ignored throughout the rest of the book in favour of macros. To be fair, I have never seen so many (bad) macros in a book before-- this would humble even Microsoft.

But wait a minute, the introduction said that objects and classes were the most important feature to offer to programmers over C. So where do they fit in? About 500 pages into the 600 page book they are given around 50 pages of treatment, and that's everything: classes, objects, constructors, destructors, inheritance, virtual functions, and abstract classes.

So, as a book on C++ this is on the execution rather than the starting block; as a book on C it is atrocious; as an introduction to programming it is worse than hopeless; as a book it is an amateurish mess. The authors' knowledge in these areas is as close to arithmetic underflow as makes no difference. What I would like to know is what the **** a reputable publisher like Prentice Hall is doing publishing such ****.

Comment: Summary of reviews for: An Introduction to Programming Using C++ Introductory Programming with Object-Oriented C++ C++ Programming Made Simple On the whole I found reviewing these books made for depressing reading. As someone who trains people as part of his job it gives me no satisfaction to see it done so badly by others. It is also the reason that I have been quite frank. Writing a book is not a trivial task but, with all due respect to the authors, withdrawing these books from print would do the software industry and the forests of the world a great service. - Kevlin.

Mansfield Jr
Practical Data Structures Using C/C++ by Antonakos & Mansfield Jr [Not Recommended]  (Reviewed Mar 1999)
Reference Guide to C & C++ by J Antonakos & K Mansfield Jr [Not Recommended]  (Reviewed Mar 1999)