Books 4 Learning Visual C++ .NET

[ChoKamir]

Hello

 

I'm new to Visual C++ .NET i've been looking around a bit on the net for good books to start off with. But also not spending half the book on the basics. I'm a fairly good VB6 programmer so basic programming stuff i know. I don't need 500 pages on all the syntacs. Just how to use the C++ .NET envirement the syntact etc in short and goin into depth on advanced stuff like XML, Database, Internet etc.

I found a few books but all the reviews had a big discussion about that the books did go to much into MFC and not too much into managed code. So here another question for you vokes. What is meant by MFC/COM and Managed code. As far as i understood from those reviews MFC/COM is the base for all or something.

Anyway some explanation would be apreciated very much and any comments on good books are always welcome.

 

ChoKamir

[Nerseus]

I don't think you're going to find a book like what you describe. You've listed a WIDE array of topics. Here's how books are *normally* laid out:

1. C++ syntax (just C++ the language)

2. Managed C++ (generally info about the framework and how to use it with C++)

3. General purpose .NET books (database access, internet connections, etc.)

 

Beware books (or look for them!) with "Visual C++ .NET" in the title. Many of them are about using Visual Studio and it's many wizards and give little info on coding. They generally have an appendix for a "quick start" to learning C++.

 

If you really want to use C++ (managed or not doesn't matter), then pick up a good C++ book first and foremost. You can't do much with a language if you don't know it's rules. I have this book and would HIGHLY recommend it. Bjarne Stroustrup's book is also very good (he's the creator of C++, more or less), but I liked the other book's style better.

 

To learn ".NET C++" is really to learn the .NET framework. There are a number of good books on the subject. I'd figure out what areas you really want to learn and get a book that covers most of them. For example, ADO.NET could cover 2 or 3 large books by itself. But if you just want an intro, then it might be covered in a chapter or two by some books.

 

MFC is old school - don't worry about it too much. It's Microsoft's Foundation Classes, a C++ specific library of code similar to the .NET framework.

 

COM is just a standard - kinda hard to describe by itself. It, too, has become old school with the introduction of .NET. It was made popular by VB4 through VB6. You would create a DLL as a "COM" DLL, which exposed a standard set of methods so that programs using your DLL could "see" the classes, methods, etc. in the DLL. Before COM you had plain vanilla C-style DLLs which meant you declared your functions "by hand". If you ever used VB's feature of calling into the Win API then you used a C-style DLL.

 

.NET provides a much easier and robust way to figure out what a DLL has inside (including classes and methods, interfaces, etc.).

 

You can create a COM DLL from .NET and you can use COM DLLs from within .NET. But unless you've got existing code already compiled as a COM DLL you probably won't care one iota about COM.

 

-nerseus