The Beginner's Guide to C++ (Beginner's Guides)

The Beginner's Guide to C++ eliminates the complexity of C++ by introducing classes in manageable bits. Yaroshenko is a master of the learning-by-examples-school of teaching: He marks "Try it out!" on every other page and features a simple problem to illustrate a recently introduced concept.

This huge volume is one of the more unorthodox works in the C++ genre. Yaroshenko sometimes identifies concepts in an odd but interesting way; for example, the chapter on arrays and iteration is titled "Working with Large Amounts of Data" and the chapter on input/output functions is titled "Using Disks." The book is also peppered with three-dimensional black-and-white graphs, which start to look psychedelic after all-night programming sessions. However, The Beginner's Guide to C++ provides more detail than many other C++ introductions and includes dozens of examples that illustrate how to create classes.