Who Should Read This Book

To get the most out of this book, you should already be an experienced C++ programmer. There's no coverage of C++ syntax, and I assume in places that you're already familiar with functions like strlen() or printf() . More importantly, I assume that you've faced certain types of problems in the past and have a guess about how to tackle them in Visual C++. I encourage you to draw on your experience and place the approaches I show you in the larger context of the other programming you've done.

If you're new to programming, and you don't know any C++ syntax, you're going to find it harder to understand the examples, but also to understand the motivation for them. When you've faced a particular problem before, using a different programming language or a different class library, you'll appreciate the powerful and simple ways to solve the problems that are presented in this book.