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More Exceptional C++
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Author: Herb Sutter
List Price: $37.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 020170434X
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co (17 December, 2001)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 32,850
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
4.5 stars, good book
I read this book after reading Effective C++ by Scott Meyers. Being able to discuss specific topics rather than viewing a language as a whole was my preferred way of understanding C++, so the books by Sutter and Meyers fit me perfectly.The main advantage the Exceptional C++ series has over the Meyers series is that you can tell Sutter is the better programmer. You can trust that everything Meyers says is correct but in the end all you really get is some extra pointers on how to do certain things. Sutter on the other hand gets a little deeper on the same topics and makes you feel like can write better C++ code, rather than just being able to format it better. One complaint I had about Effective C++ by Meyers was that most of the book is text and contains very little code. My experience with reading programming books is that around 90% of plain text will not be retained. The only way verbal programming text will ever stick is if there is good code to accompany it. Since Sutter is a programmer first, author second, he provides more code examples and they seem to be more thought out. If you have the time then you should probably read from both authors, however, if you don't want to read 4 books then you should probably read the Exceptional series over the Effective series.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Challenging and entertaining
In this book Herb Sutter continues investigating of the problems that face C++ developers. Even discussions of the problems that one is unlikely to confront reveal important aspects of the proper C++ programming.The author often beats on a problem until it "has ceased to be ... expired and gone ... bereft of life ... rests in peace" (p. 118). In this particular book, most of the time this is a good thing, because in software development almost everything is a tradeoff, and you don't want to open the gates of hell as a side effect of plugging up a little hole. I have enjoyed reading this book at least as much as its predecessor, "Exceptional C++". Unfortunately on occasion the author spends too much time discussing trivial implications that appear not to be in line with the complexity of other topics. Also, constant restatement of the parts of every problem statement is quite wasteful and distracting, especially considering the amount of space they occupy (sometimes 25% of the solution space!)
Rating: 5 out of 5
A reality check for those who know C++
This book, like the earlier one by Sutter, was a reality check for me. Before I read it, I blissfully believed that I knew C++ really well. After all, I have taught it at the college and corporate level for ten years and programmed commercial code for three. I have also written and published material about the language in several journals. However, these forty exercises really opened my eyes and exercised my brain. They are excellent teaching material, showing you aspects of the language that are subtle, yet critical to know.
One topic that I experienced firsthand is when an exception is thrown out of a constructor. This happened to me many years ago, and I spent hours trying to correct the code so that it finally did something similar to what I wanted. Had I been able to read items 17 and 18 of this book, I could have cut that to about twenty minutes and kept more of my hair.
The problems are all typical of those encountered in the "unusual average" day in the life of a C++ programmer. By that I mean that they may not necessarily reflect the day to day work, but are general enough to most likely crop up on some day for everyone who writes code in C++. The general categories are:1) Generic programming and the C++ standard library
2) Optimization and Performance
3) Exception safety issues and techniques
4) Inheritance and polymorphism
5) Memory and resource management
6) Free functions and macros
7) Miscellaneous topics There are many things going on behind the scenes in your C++ programs that most of the time you can ignore. However, when it is a time that you can't, then Sutter is one of the people to consult. His material is always well written and useful in the real world and I recommend this book to all my corporate clients.
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