If you want to know whether you should buy this book, read thisintroduction!
First question: Why learn C++ at all? That's easy: It’s today’s dominant computer language. When the going gets tough, the professionals turn to C++. There are many other languages, of course, but they lack the universality and power of C++. For example, Visual Basic is useful for quickly putting together applications that aren’t too large or demanding, assembly language is good if you’re writing a device driver, and Java is great for the World Wide Web. (Java is derived from C++ anyway.) But for a major standalone application, C++ is the most popular language that has the power and flexibility to produce the fastest, best-performing code. For these reasons, C++ is a major part of the Computer Science curriculum at
almost every school and university. If you’re a programmer, chances are that sooner or later you’ll need to know it.
This book starts off with very easy examples; we don’t assume you’re a rocket scientist. We try to explain everything with no assumptions aboutwhat you may already know. We use plenty of figures and analogies to clarify the text. The program examples are heavily commented to make everything as clear as possible. As you progress further into the book, the examples become more challenging, but we try to keep the increase in difficulty gradual, so you’realways ready for what comes next. Ultimately we cover all the main features of C++.
