I read a post earlier about C++ books and whatnot.
I have a few books from my yesteryears (10-13 years ago) on C++ mostly. How useful would these books be in terms of the language as it has progressed in the last 10 or so years. Are they even worth digging up or not.
Looking for an opinion, thanks.
Ask Narue -- she told me awhile back that she collects old computer books.
They can still be correct if they are for standard C++ (ANSI) which was finalised in about 1998. The syntax in older books is probably now depreceated.
I have "THE C++ PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE" second edition by Bjarne Stroustrup.(1991) among others. The preface begins with a lovely quote :
"The road goes ever on and on" - Bilbo Baggins
I will never sell this book!
>How useful would these books be in terms of the
>language as it has progressed in the last 10 or so years.
Naturally they won't be useful if you need information on changes made since those books were written, but old books are still a wealth of knowledge. Just read them with the caveat that there may have been improvements over the years in terms of best practice as well as language evolution. The sample code often doesn't compile without tweaks when you get into the really old books, and especially with books that focus on object oriented programming, what was a good design ten years ago could very likely be bit bucket fodder today.
>Are they even worth digging up or not.
My collection is probably coming close to 500, the majority of them can be considered "old", and I consult many of them on a regular basis. They're worth looking at, if only to determine whether you want to sell them or not. ;)
Well here's the deal. I got really interested in programming around 12 years old or so. I was unable to teach myself, but I still had a bunch of books. I get older, join the military, serve 6 years, and here I am finally 26 and just learning it for real.
I have just a few old books which I previously thought would be worthless due to changes that have made it so. But on the other hand, I kind of feel like a lot is being left out by the way that they are presenting the language now. So I went ahead and started poking around at the boxes in my attic and pulled out the following:
C++ In Plain English - Brian Overland 1996
Rescued By C++ Second Edition - Kris Jamsa 1996
Teach Yourself Visual C++ 4 in 21 Days 1996
Visual C++ Tutorials, Development System for Windows 95 and Windows NT 1995
Pretty neat thing was the multicolored markers I used to write my name in a couple of them ;D
Visual c++ 4.0 is probably useless now
That is fairly obvious.
MSVC++ 6 is still common though.
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