I'm fairly new to programming and my exposure is exclusively to C++. Currently I've read "C++ How to program" and Ivor Horton's "ANSI C++" and I feel I have a good understanding of the topics covered in these books. My question is basically where should I go from here? I was thinking of Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" or "The C++ Standard Library" by Nicolai M. Josuttis. Do you think that my exposure is adequate for learning the more advanced material in those books? And if so which one would you recommend I read first?

Any suggestions are highly appreciated!

Take a look here while you are waiting for other replies.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...cat.php/cat/19

"Do you think that my exposure is adequate for learning the more advanced material in those books? And if so which one would you recommend I read first? "

You said nothing about your level of programming experience. Have you programmed anything in C++? Have you done the programming exercises given in the books you read? Have you written a complete program from scratch? Have you made significant changes to a large program written by an experienced programmer? Where you are on the experience learning curve is just as important as what you have read and understood.

Another area to consider is instead of learning more theory of how to set up C++ classes, etc. you should learn how to work with existing standard class libraries. "The C++ Standard Library" by Nicolai M. Josuttis is probably such a book, although I have never read it. I have read "Programming with Qt' by Mattias Dalheimer and I can recommend that. Dalheimer is a so-so explainer and Qt is a world class library of C++ classes.

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Steve Stites

Thanks for replying! Yeah I just noticed that section right after I posted and read through it a bit. I've seen similar reviews on amazon and I'm leaning towards just picking up "The C++ Programming Language". I guess I'm just wondering if anyone had any personal experiences or caveats to let me know about before I dive in and offer up my 50$.

There's a review on Amazon which suggests that it's better to pick up "The C++ Standard Library" before reading "The C++ Programming Language" and I'm wondering if there's any validity to that suggestion.

Well, Stroustrup's book or C++ Primer are probably the best choice. I'd recommend leaving any book covering STL for later, and you can learn quite a lot about it from these books.

First, thanks for responding!

Sorry about that I guess I should have explained that in depth more. I have done all of the exercises in those two books without any trouble. Outside of that my only experience in real world programming is making small (practically trivial) changes to source files to work out bugs when installing software on my linux box. I guess I was thinking it'd be better to have a solid understanding of the language's fundamentals and theory before I started working on real projects.

Perhaps I'm wrong on this part though because I have heard from people that it's better to just start working on code and that I'd learn more by doing that. If that's where you think I should go from here then by all means please suggest so and I'll look into my options.

Ok cool thank you! That's kind of the answer I'm looking for. If Stroustrups book is digestible without a huge exposure to the STL then I'll probably pick it up and learn everything I can from it and then work on some novelty projects of my own before getting into the more advanced STL stuff.