Microsoft(r) Visual C++(r) .Net Step by Step--Version 2003 [Paperback]

The code is accurate and the examples are easy to load, saving you a ton of keystrokes while allowing you to concentrate on the walkthrough of how the program accomplishes it's task.

However, for the beginner... look elsewhere. For those that know how to code already, take a look at this:

Page 14: A "Hello World" program.

Page 15: OOP programming, encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance, classes and objects.

Page 21 begins with a "simple" example. Within that example are classes, public and private members, how to access them, pointers, indirection operators, the garbage collector, managed extensions, functions - including the unexplained Console::Write() and Console::WriteLine() functions that perform string output.

Woops! Almost forgot namespaces, #include directives and the "using <mscorlib.dll>". Any beginners know what a .dll file is?

Then we move onto page 26... Eeek!

And, just to make sure you beginners know you're going to be overwhelmed, here's a paragraph from page 23:

"Because of these performance issues, the .NET Framework also supports value types. Value types are objects created on the stack. The variable contains the object itself rather than a pointer to the object. Hence, the variable doesn't have to be dereferenced to manipulate the object, which of course improves performance. To declare a value type class, the __value keyword should be used instead of the __gc keyword. In this case, the variables would have been created on the stack. Instead of declaring pointers for this class and then creating the objects on the CLR heap by using the new operator, the objects would have been declared in the same way as the built-in C++ types and the member vairiables accessed by the dot operator rather than via the dereferencing operator."

Got all that? Hope so, because before you reach page 50, he'll cover declaring variables, assigning values, Arrays, Pointers, References, Constants, Enumerations, Typedefs, the String class, arithmatic operators, relational and logical operators, typecasting, the Ternary Operator, the sizeof() operator, bitwise operators, precedence and associativity.

Neat huh?

Only for experienced, proficient C++ programmers.