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Title: Beginning ATL 3 COM Programming by Richard Grimes ISBN: 1-86100-120-7 Publisher: Wrox Press Inc Pub. Date: 20 May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.99

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Average Customer Rating: 3.52 (25 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Inconsistent enough to cause most readers to struggle
Comment: Maybe I can see three and one-half stars. For some, the book may be useful. A practical goal of the book is to develop a full ActiveX control using ATL and various tweaks. For most, getting to that point with this book would prove to be an arduous task unless they already know the subject and do not even need a book, let alone this one.

This book cannot be considered good for beginners, that is, those reasonably competent in C++ with maybe some COM rudiments. The book does not stay on a consistent path of explanation. As other reviewers have mentioned, it is full of "by-the-ways" that have nothing to do with the topic at hand and usually refer to a concept that has not been introduced, if ever. It is frustrating.

Also, the authors cannot make up their minds about how much ATL code and internals should be presented or what their general level of explanation will be. Time after time the reader is left with code snippets that cannot be well understood because of the poor base established by the authors. The various topics of error handling, automation, aggregation, and connection points are just not covered particularly well. The authors especially botch the topic of connection points with an overly complicated example utilizing several ATL classes that are marginally explained. Also, virtually all COM books, and this one is no exception, do a lousy job of explaining the various types of marshalling, type libraries, proxies, stubs, and the nuances of their interactions and when they apply or should be explicitly used.

The fact is that COM itself is complicated - ATL would not exist if that wasn't the case. And ATL, the tool that's supposed to simplify the task, itself is complicated. Coherent, consistent, logical, well-written books are needed by most to understand this topic. Unfortunately, the computer gurus and nerds seemed to have weighed in on these topics ( of course they created COM & ATL ) much to the suffering of most of us who have to wade through their tortured books. There are some exceptions. Armstrong's "Active Template Library" was a pleasure to read. Troelsen's "Developer's Workshop" looks promising at first glance. Early on "Inside COM" and the Eddons' "Inside DCOM" were quite good.

I fault the publishers as much as the authors, assuming they are not one and the same. Books should be proofread by at least some in the target audience instead of fellow 24-7 computer geeks.

Rating: 1
Summary: Buy if you wanna be in a soup
Comment: When I started with ATL COM I had but little choice apart from this book. Since there are too many heads on each and every WROX book they spoil the broth. IT IS NOT FOR THE BEGINERS NEITHER FOR THE INTERMIDIATE. And now that I have got around 2 and 1/2 years of experience I still find it intimidating.

Best way to Start will be
1) Read Inside COM (Microsoft) Inside Out.
2) Graduate to Andrew Troelsen's Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0. The best that any one can get.
3) And Do read the MSDN.
4) For those who want then to jump into COM+ bandwagan read through Pradeep Tapadiya's 'COM+ Programming: A Practical Guide Using Visual C++ and ATL'

That will make you day. And hey don't forget to read the postings at develop.com and anything written by Don Box/Jefrey Richter.

Bottom Line - STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK

Rating: 4
Summary: Prerequisites for reading this book
Comment: I am a fourth year college student, and I have currently finished chapter 3 of this book (It's over Christmas break, so it's a little slow). I read the Amazon reviews and found some of them rather misleading.

Many readers gave this book bad reviews simply because they didn't have the proper experience to read this book. At the back cover of the book, it states that "You should be fairly experienced in C++ and Windows programming." to read this book. Furthermore, it recommends one to read Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 6 before reading this book. Those recommendations are laughable, and led to a great number of people to buy the wrong book.

First, if your background is primarily in VB, and your experience of C++ only came from 1 or 2 semesters of C++ lessons from college, you may need to brush up on your OOP skills. The book discusses in detail certain advanced features of C++ such as exception handling mechanisms (global unwinding). It also makes heavy use of C, for example, it uses frequently and . I thought I was a pretty experienced C++ programmer when I took CS201, but that class does nothing to prepare me for this book. I would suggest anyone who needs to brush up on C++ to read Bjarne Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language before taking on this book.

Secondly, the book suggests that it is geared "primarily at Visual C++ 6 developers". It's terribly vague. The suggested reading of Beginning Visual C++ 6 will not help you much since it primarily covers how to use MFC. The ATL 3 book makes heavy use of Win API 32 function calls, and I would suggest that people read Charles Petzold's Programming Windows for the GUI part, and Jeffrey Richter's Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows before commencing work on this book. If you don't know the material covered by those two suggested readings, you would be very confused by ATL.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt if you tried your hands on MFC for a little, but so far (up to chapter 3), I didn't feel that there was a great deal of knowledge needed about MFC. I couldn't recommend any good books for MFC since I haven't read any. By the way, I think Ivor Horton's book on Beginning Visual C++ 6 sucked. He sucked even more in his Beginning Java 2. Oh well, poor guy :(

After you have acquired all the proper experiences, the book would appear fairly involved, but not overwhelming. Things are clearly explained when you read them carefully. Like many Wrox books, though, it doesn't discuss some of the finer points twice, but overall, the book should serve as a good primer on ATL for those studious enough to make it.

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