Microsoft's Visual C++ 2.0 development environment is a very complicated tool. I know I'm not using a fraction of its capabilities -- the documentation that comes with it is so weak I'm only vaguely aware of how its cooler features work. I'm a firm believer that on-line help is great for reference material, but not for instructions to actually learn how to use a product. Visual C++ 2.0 has great on-line reference information, but almost nothing to help learn how to use the product well. So I'm on a quest for a good book to help me master the program, and Nancy Nicolaisen's The Visual Guide to Visual C++ is my first stop.
January 8, 1997
Unfortunately, for all its weight (854 pages) the book is pretty shallow. The first, smaller portion of the book (sections I - III) covers how to use Visual C++, spending a good bit of time on such topics as how to use the AppWizard, the IDE, and how to build a Windows application without getting very far into it. Section I, Using AppWizard, spends a lot of time taking you through the four or so dialog boxes used to invoke the AppWizard, but these boxes are hardly arcane in the first place. Similarly, Section II's discussion of how to use the various tools such as the dialog editor details the various buttons found in each tool, without really getting into how to get the best use out of them.
Section III talks about how to build Windows apps using AppWizards and the IDE tools discussion in sections I and II, but is really a pretty basic introduction to Windows programming. The fourth section of the book, and most of its bulk, is devoted to a reference for the Microsoft Foundation Classes. This is material that is found in the Visual C++ on-line documentation.
The main problem with The Visual Guide to Visual C++ is that it doesn't try to teach anything that you can't figure out for yourself. Like too many computer books today, all it does is rehash the documentation available with the product it covers, without spending enough time to help you get started on the road to mastery. My quest continues.
