If so I'm curious how long it took you? How long should it take you to finish this book?

Errata stop at page 508. Best I can tell (believe me a good bit of time was spent digging around in the book and reading M$ pontifications) the Sketcher code in the book contains quite a few errors. Mostly forgotten headers and little details, but a mine field of errors that are arguably unnecessary.

The first 2/3 of the book seems crisp and focused -- an excellent teaching tool, but once Visual Studio 2013 is brought into the mix focus is lost and the Sketcher exercise fails to ease the learning process.

It's reasonable to assume that error laden code will encourage the student to simply download sample code rather than painstakingly go through the vital process of entering and understanding. That breaks the learning rigor Mr. Horton crafted in the first third and leaves the student with a lot less than "Visual Studio 2013" in the title implies.

Granted, one learns a great deal by debugging someone else's errors, but is that really Mr. Horton's role here?

Sketcher is an animal. I worked through the first part and got stuck.
Chapter 18. I can't get the example working. For example page 860.
When working through printed example it you cannot set the Initialize the type names as shown. Until you finally read the line on the bottom of the page and add the shapes namespace. The I am stuck on the next page.
Array<String^>^ shapeTypes{typeCircle,typeSquare,typeTriangle};

Visual studio tells me there are to many initializers. I am still puzzelled about that as the download code tells me the same error. Probably there is a simple solution but I don't know the answer jet. And yes there are many more errors in the book. Somethimes the compiler tells you that this new C++ code is not yet implemented. It makes you wander if the examples where ever tested or maybe tested with a prelimenarry compiler.

I like the book but the quality is at some places sloppy. A pitty.
Then in this book , the 2013 version, it covers in chapter 18 via the MemoryTest example windows programming for windows 8(. C++/CX and XALM) In the previous version 2010 it covers C++/CLI. I hope the next version will have improved quality and a lot less errors.

Sofar I did not see an alternative for this book. Please improve quality and information on the XALM C++ interface specially to the different constructors part.

I am still positive about the book as there seems to be no alternative to it .
regards.
Jan Flikweert.

Jan Fikweert wrote "Sketcher is an animal. I worked through the first part and got stuck."

You will get no argument for me. Part of the problem is that it well may be easier to dump Visual Studio's opaque "tools" and follow Charles Petzold's strategy. Tools like Visual Studio that generate code in the background are a very mixed blessing.

Mr. Horton sort of leaves the steep Visual Studio learning curve as an exercise for the reader. Some steps tempt the reader to treat the section as a cookbook instead of struggling to understand the underlying (and thready) logic of Visual Studio. Like many of Microsoft's products Visual Studio support demands the user practically know the solution in order to successfully frame a question -- great, once you're familiar with the product; but, frustrating while learning.

I too made it through the "Sketcher" GUI even though I have yet to work through the serializing and printing in chapter 17.

As Jan pointed out, this book, warts and all, is the best -- if not only -- game in town. I'd certainly welcome any other resource suggestions -- perhaps one that focuses on the challenge of understanding the terse Visual Studio and unwinding the code it generates.

Aza D. Oberman

I finished chapter 18. Found a number of errors and I logged them. Logging an error is not an easy job with wrox. Could be made a lot freindlier. This probably also is the reason why all the other errors are not in the erata sheet. The process is not logical

It took me a number of years to work through the books. Visual studio C++ 2010 and Visual studio C++ 2013 (I had to stop for month because I was to ill to work on it.)

Both books I work through twice. The information per page is often dense so you think you got it but you really did not pin it down completely and sometimes I overlooked details.

I think if there is going to be a next book 2015 for example the book should be made more modular. If you are a new programmer then why should you bother about MFC. I understand that a lot of new programmers have to maintain things from the past. But Ivor skipped CLI covered in visual studio 2010 didn't he? So skip MFC and focus on the new world. If you really would need MFC you could still buy an older version of this book.

I would like to see more about the XALM interface (The various data types and none default constructors) and then I would like to see a topic about debugging apps. I asume serialisation applies to the new world also so please include it. I also could use some help on how to find your way around in the library world. What is an easy way of determinig what function to use. Intelisense looks nice but what if it does not. (I had several times that it did not help me. ) Some more tips to get arround in the MS jungle would be helpfull. And then the latest features of new c++ standards (That is if those features make it in the released version of the compiler. I had a number of cases where the compiler told me that this statement case was not jet implemented! So some examples have not been tested with a released version of the compiler)

It would be a pity if Ivor stopped here. I like his books
Jan