Hi Duoas my response was not a personal attack on you and I apologise if I offended you.
You link to Amazon reviews and claim that it is self evident that the book is trash. However, the reviews do not back up your claim and in fact say the opposite.
The book has 5 star [45], 4 star [27], 3 star [11], 2 star [8], 1 star [13] and overall [4 star]. This would suggest that majority of readers found the book to be of a fairly high standard and when you read the comments it is clear that this book is aimed at someone just starting out.
I actually have experience of both books and I found the c++ in 21 days to be a good introduction to the C++ language. On the other hand I found the Bjarne Stroustrup to be more aimed at experienced programmers who want to learn the C++ language in great depth.
If you actually read the comments of the book you suggested then you will see that most people who wrote a review back up what I said, this is not a book for beginners, nor is it a tutorial.
I actually gave a brief explanation of why I thought your suggestion was not good for the OP.
This book is a great book but I would not recommend it to someone just learning as it is very in depth, it has no solutions for the exercises and deals with some advanced stuff very early, which means it is hard to follow. |
When you are trying to help someone learn you need to understand what level they are currently operating and what their previous knowledge is. Going on what the OP said it is clear they are just starting C++ and I feel your suggestion would be completely overwhelming to a novice C++ programmer.
My background in C++ is that I used the language to write programmes for solving physics problems and I only used a small part of the language to do so. I have not done any programming for a number of years, that is until I came back to study for a software development course. At the insert I bought the book you suggested and it was obvious after the first 3 chapters that this book was not suited to my current level of understanding and I made the decision to return to it once I get more competent and knowledgable with the language.
I stand by my opinion that Teach yourself c++ in 21 days is far more suited to someone just beginning C++ programming and that the book by Bjarne Stroustrup should be avoided by beginners, unless they have a very strong programming background and experience of other OO languages.