Author: Vladimir Kushnir
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pages: 142
ISBN: 978-1449320935
Ebook: 978-1449321352
Audience: Beginner/Mid Level
Rating: 4
Reviewer: Bill Cunningham

This short book could best be described as a HOW-TO in avoiding the pitfalls that can happen to the average C++ programmer in the course of writing code. Helpful tips and examples demonstrate the concepts clearly.

Some of the chapters are short, very short. and the book could have been better organized in a more cookbook or quick reference style. The author introduces his own template class to assist the developer in catching errors in the compiler. However some of the advice given is a little on the obvious side of things for the more experienced developers who have been bitten by these mistakes early in their careers. For example, the author suggests to avoid using the new[] operator and instead use the template vector, sound advice if you can do that and can afford the speed hit. Also his suggestion of using smart pointers, while brief, is very useful for those writing non-trivial production programs.

If I were developing a curriculum for C++ students, I would strongly suggest this book to assist in learning the language. Intermediate and beginning developers will benefit more from the book than the highly experienced developers.