Best book for beginning C++ student?

May 16, 2012 8:06 AM

What's the single best book for a beginning student of C++ to work through over a period of a month or two?
posted by killdevil to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Stroustrup's 'The C++ Programming Language'. The 2nd Edition, if possible.
posted by veedubya at 8:15 AM on May 16, 2012

On to C++ is a pretty good book for someone with little programming experience.
posted by ignignokt at 8:16 AM on May 16, 2012

veedubya has it. Not everyone who invents a language can write for beans, but happily for us, Stroustrup can.
posted by d. z. wang at 8:45 AM on May 16, 2012

Thinking in C++ gets great reviews* and the ebook version of it is free from the author.

*Caveat that I don't know how good it would be for a pure newbie.
posted by mmascolino at 8:46 AM on May 16, 2012

"Accelerated C++" by Koenig and Moo is particularly good for organising the topics in an order most suitable for actually learning C++. Many other books organise topics more or less in the order the features in question were invented, which is a particularly poor way of learning C++ for most people.
posted by emilyw at 9:18 AM on May 16, 2012

Do you already know any other programming languages?
posted by scose at 9:19 AM on May 16, 2012

Response by poster: scose: yep, a bunch.
posted by killdevil at 10:45 AM on May 16, 2012

Scott Meyers - Effective C++
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 1:03 PM on May 16, 2012

This is a bit late, but I just wanted to second Accelerated C++. I read it coming from a pretty strong C background but without much knowledge of the "++" features, and I thought it did a good job of focusing on how to write C++ without treating it as C with stuff bolted on. This is generally considered good practice by more advanced C++ programmers. It also assumes you're not a complete newb at coding, which it sounds like is the case for you.

I will also say that if you're still jonesing for more after you get up to speed, the Effective series (Effective C++, Effective STL, More Effective C++) is excellent.
posted by stufflebean at 10:03 PM on May 19, 2012