The Boost Graph Library: User Guide and Reference Manual (AW C++ in depth)

as described, good condition

This book does a good job at providing more content than what is on the web, and is a bit better at incrementally introducing concepts. My only complaint is pretty vapid, but easily addressed by the authors: why on Earth did you use bold italic for code font? Just change that to courier fixed (or bold), and this book would be perfect.

This book is all wonderful, but my copy comes with no CD (reason for 3 stars). It refers me to the publisher web site, where I could not find the electronic version either. Being able to search the text and print out certain pages are real benefits for me, why do they decide to stop the CD? Anybody knows how to get the electronic version?

good

THIS BOOK MAKES CONSTANT REFERENCE TO THE NOW NONEXISTENT CD-ROM CONTENT. THE PUBLISHERS AND/OR AUTHOR HAVE REMOVED THE CD-ROM FROM THE BOOK'S PRINTING AND NOW DELIVER THE CD-ROM CONTENT OVER THIS PUBLISHERS HORRENDOUSLY CRAPPY INTERNET WEBSITE. THE CD-ROM CONTENT IS NOW MADE AVAILABLE VIA ... WAIT FOR IT: STUFFIT *.SIT FILE. YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP. THIS IS SO TOTALLY A BAIT AND SWITCH IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY. TOTAL SUCKAGE IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. BOOST! BOOST GRAPH! C/C++ RIGHT? RIGHT? NOT OBJECTIVE-C, NOT APPLE-SCRIPT. C/C++. TAR.GZ OR ZIP/GZIP OR PERHAPS TAR.BZIP2 IN A PINCH. STUFFIT? AYFKM AYFKM AYFKM? IF I COULD RETURN THE BOOK I TOTALLY WOULD ... BUT AMAZON DID NOT DELIVER THE BOOK WITH A PURCHASE ORDER AND/OR RETURN LABEL. AACK!

Its amazing what is possible to do. Note to the wise: if you think something is impossible, you might be wrong. Often the limitations you face are not in the external reality, but are within your own mind.This is one of those books which has expanded the limits of what was considered possible. For decades, nobody believed it was possible to write a fully generic, reusable graph library which didn't make some compromises in runtime or memory. After all, the graph abstraction is very general: anything from a toaster to a town could be a node in some graph--and each object has its own most effiicient representations. How could one library really deal with any arbitrary graph no matter what data structures were used to represent it?Well, it can be done, and here, really for the first time in history, it has been done. Amazing. What's the catch?Well, the catch is that its damn hard to learn how to use, especially for busy, middle-aged programmers who don't have as much time to keep current as they used to have in their 20's. The effort it takes to master these techniques is roughly equivalent to learning how to differentiate and integrate polynomials and trig functions. Expect to spend several 40-hour weeks reading this book if you really want to "get" it.That being said, once you "get" it, a whole new wonderland of programming will be opened up for you. You'll never have to write another DFS algorithm or MST algorithm again--its already been done for you. The initial down payment is very steep, but programming at a higher level really does pay dividents in increased productivity and effectiveness. So buy this book, get partner to watch the kids for several weekends, and dig in.And keep in mind--whatever impossible problem you're currently facing--it might not be as impossible as it seems.

good value

Poor book, worse library (and I actually love most of Boost).

This book is of course very dated, having not been updated since 2001. The library itself is more of a generics library than an OO one leaving some of its concepts and the patterns one requires slightly oblique.The library has changed little since then, incredibly, but By this point in time the online documentation should suffice

Ottimo libro, con una curva d'apprendimento elevata. Da usare più come riferimento che come libro per apprendere le boost graph. Comunque ottimo