This is the frankly laughable title of the book I'm currently borrowing.

Sure, maybe you could learn BBC BASIC in 21 days. But C++? I doubt it.

The lesson plan looks... interesting. Take a look:

Day  #1: Compiling, linking and running.
Day  #2: Program structure. Functions.
Day  #3: Variables and constants. Assignments. Printing results.
Day  #4: Statements, blocks and expressions. Branching.
Day  #5: Writing functions.
Day  #6: Writing classes and creating objects. Constructors.
Day  #7: For loops. While loops. If/then/else. Switch/case.
Day  #8: Pointers.
Day  #9: References.
Day #10: Overloading. Dynamic allocation.
Day #11: Inheritance. Virtual member functions.
Day #12: Arrays. Strings. Pointer arithmetic.
Day #13: Multiple inheritance. Abstract classes. Pure virtual functions.
Day #14: Static members. Static functions. Pointers to functions.
Day #15: Containment and delegation.
Day #16: Streams. File I/O.
Day #17: Namespaces.
Day #18: OO analysis and design.
Day #19: Templates. STL.
Day #20: Exception handling.
Day #21: Conditional compilation. The C preprocessor.

Riiiight. So, let's see, on day #6 you start writing and using classes - 
a fairly advanced topic. And the next day, you learn /how to write a 
for-loop/, which is bread-and-butter stuff that every programmer knows 
about. That's... interesting.

Oh, look. Day #12, you learn about inheritance, and the next day you 
learn about /arrays/?

I'm also loving the complete lack of any coherent direction or 
organisation. It's like somebody decided what topics need to be in the 
book, and then did a random shuffle on them. One minute you're learning 
about arrays and strings, and the next minute it's multiple inheritance. 
Wuh??

Suffice it to say, I'm not expecting much from this book. But who knows, 
maybe it will surprise me? Anyway, I've been working from an online 
resource, but it really doesn't go into enough detail. (E.g., it doesn't 
explain what a copy constructor is [or even mention that they exist], 
and that seems kinda important to me.) So now I'm going to try this book.

The /other/ fun thing is that the book claims to be compliant with the 
"final ANSI/ISO C++ standard". Yeah, well, it was published in 1999. I'm 
going to go out on a limb and say the C++ standard may have changed 
slightly since then. ;-)

If I find any particularly amusing remarks, I'll let you know...

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