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Beginning ATL 3 COM Programming
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Author: Julian Templeman, Richard Grimes, Alex Stockton, Karli Watson, George V. Reilly
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: B0000B0SYV
Publisher: Wrox Press Inc (September, 1999)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 1,423,785
Average Customer Rating: 3.52 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 1 out of 5
Buy if you wanna be in a soup
When I started with ATL COM I had but little choice apart from this book. Since there are too many heads on each and every WROX book they spoil the broth. IT IS NOT FOR THE BEGINERS NEITHER FOR THE INTERMIDIATE. And now that I have got around 2 and 1/2 years of experience I still find it intimidating. Best way to Start will be
1) Read Inside COM (Microsoft) Inside Out.
2) Graduate to Andrew Troelsen's Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0. The best that any one can get.
3) And Do read the MSDN.
4) For those who want then to jump into COM+ bandwagan read through Pradeep Tapadiya's 'COM+ Programming: A Practical Guide Using Visual C++ and ATL' That will make you day. And hey don't forget to read the postings at develop.com and anything written by Don Box/Jefrey Richter. Bottom Line - STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK
Rating: 4 out of 5
Prerequisites for reading this book
I am a fourth year college student, and I have currently finished chapter 3 of this book (It's over Christmas break, so it's a little slow). I read the Amazon reviews and found some of them rather misleading. Many readers gave this book bad reviews simply because they didn't have the proper experience to read this book. At the back cover of the book, it states that "You should be fairly experienced in C++ and Windows programming." to read this book. Furthermore, it recommends one to read Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 6 before reading this book. Those recommendations are laughable, and led to a great number of people to buy the wrong book. First, if your background is primarily in VB, and your experience of C++ only came from 1 or 2 semesters of C++ lessons from college, you may need to brush up on your OOP skills. The book discusses in detail certain advanced features of C++ such as exception handling mechanisms (global unwinding). It also makes heavy use of C, for example, it uses frequently and . I thought I was a pretty experienced C++ programmer when I took CS201, but that class does nothing to prepare me for this book. I would suggest anyone who needs to brush up on C++ to read Bjarne Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language before taking on this book.Secondly, the book suggests that it is geared "primarily at Visual C++ 6 developers". It's terribly vague. The suggested reading of Beginning Visual C++ 6 will not help you much since it primarily covers how to use MFC. The ATL 3 book makes heavy use of Win API 32 function calls, and I would suggest that people read Charles Petzold's Programming Windows for the GUI part, and Jeffrey Richter's Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows before commencing work on this book. If you don't know the material covered by those two suggested readings, you would be very confused by ATL. Finally, it wouldn't hurt if you tried your hands on MFC for a little, but so far (up to chapter 3), I didn't feel that there was a great deal of knowledge needed about MFC. I couldn't recommend any good books for MFC since I haven't read any. By the way, I think Ivor Horton's book on Beginning Visual C++ 6 sucked. He sucked even more in his Beginning Java 2. Oh well, poor guy :( After you have acquired all the proper experiences, the book would appear fairly involved, but not overwhelming. Things are clearly explained when you read them carefully. Like many Wrox books, though, it doesn't discuss some of the finer points twice, but overall, the book should serve as a good primer on ATL for those studious enough to make it.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Not well written
This book reads poorly. The author clearly understands the technology, but just as clearly does not know how to communicate that effectively in the written word. The writing is overly verbose ['In the previous discussion we obviously ommitted any reference to a topic that desires more exploration.'] Good writing--esp. technical writing--needs to be clear and to the point. This book is a difficult read, and I gave up after 12 pages. It is the editor's job, and the publisher's responsibility to insure that a technical book is clear to the average reader in the target audience. I wasted 40 bucks...don't you.
Similar Products
· Beginning Atl Com Programming
· Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0
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