Problem Solving with C++ [With CDROM] Book

It's shallow depth and vagueness do not justify its length. The author's frequent tangents add nothing to the book's content and detract from the flow of his writing. Many of these little distractions would be better footnote clarifications. Furthermore, the author's style intimately links the presented content with far too frequent, cumbersome examples. And at the end of each section, the exercises are often dependent on the example code.

What's worse, Savitch can be inconsistent and misleading with the level of detail with which he relays information. For example, he often conflates the standardization of certain C++ features with their widespread adoption (in his explanation, not in his understanding I'm sure).

The quality of the book also sharply declines in the last few chapters. I stumbled over quite a few oddly-worded descriptions and uninspired examples, and I caught several glaring typos despite skimming faster than ever as I neared the end.

It's not a bad book, however, not at all. What it offers is a very high-level and very accessible introduction to the C++ language. After reading it (minus the appendices), I would consider myself a proficient novice in C++. My problem with its method is that it's not for me. One could learn C++ for free with a language reference like The advantage of a textbook is that it inherently offers a structured approach and hopefully facilitates deeper learning from a practical, experienced perspective. This book falters on the latter front in all but the most basic rules of thumb, while its odd structure is cumbersome for the novice. I disagree with the "black-box" approach this book takes, especially with regard to classes (and structs), withholding their explanation until after introducing several examples of them like strings, streams, and vectors.

I do not recommend reading Savitch's introduction to the time-constrained, the impatient, and anyone fond of brevity, doubly so if the would-be reader has previous programming experience: it is a pain to observe Savitch dance around calling a class a class for the first several chapters. While shiny new tools and toys are fun to use; their early introduction is a disservice to learning, in my opinion. I'd rather read about vectors, (which appear in the first few chapters), with templates and the rest of the STL for the first time, (described toward the very end), than wait over ten chapters finally to justify their existence.