[OT] Good C++ book for a Python programmer

[Andrew Koenig]

<beliavsky at aol.com> wrote in message 
news:1106151297.339844.95380 at c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

> The 4th edition of the well-known "C++ Primer", with Moo as a new 
> co-author, will soon be published. It is a
> more comprehensive and much longer book.

It is also organized more traditionally than "Accelerated C++."

"Accelerated C++" is mostly example-driven: It presents problems, shows how 
to solve them, and introduces language and library features as needed for 
particular parts of the solutions.  Of course the problems are carefully 
chosen so that the solutions cover the most important parts of the language 
and library, but that fact is not immediately obvious from the nature of the 
problems themselves.

"C++ Primer" follows the classical approach of treating each part of the 
language and library separately in a single place.  For example, there are 
chapters on expressions, statements, functions, templates, object-oriented 
programming, and so on.  It is also much more systematic than "Accelerated 
C++."  It is also nearly three times the size.

Which of these books you prefer will depend on your learning style more than 
anything else.  If you are willing to read the entire book sequentially, you 
will probably learn C++ faster from "Accelerated C++" than from "C++ 
Primer."  On the other hand, if you want to see in one place what all the 
different kinds of statements are, so that you can learn about them all at 
once, then you will be more comfortable with "C++ Primer."

I'm biased, of course, but I believe that either of these books is a better 
starting point for someone unfamiliar with C than any other book I can think 
of.