It's a general programming book that goes over the basics. Encapsulation, Polymorphism, RAII, Scope, Virtual Functions, OOP, Generic Programming, etc  (It just so happens to use C++, and FLTK for GUI)

It goes over how to write intermediate libraries to do basic things like, Buttons/Callbacks, Drawing shapes, Windows, Images/Jpegs.

I wouldn't use it to make programs, due to having to recompile to move a button 20 pixels to the left, or to resize it. I would use FLUID if starting a project today.

The biggest thing is it teaches you to try to program first (with good structure planned) and code second. 

I have written too much spaghetti code that is hard to build on top off instead of programming with structure at the beginning. 

It compiles and runs, but is not pretty or practical. 

He does good examples of what not to do, and why. (Like use Classes instead of Structs)

The book stands out in Two ways:

1) It has nice forward and backward chapter/concept references. (In chapter 12 it will reference a concept in 4.2 and list where it is to re-read if not fully understood. I went back to referenced chapters often)

2) The book has a large amount of supporting documentation

     https://www.stroustrup.com/programming_support.html 

     https://groups.google.com/g/ppp-public 

          They discuss the broken GUI.h code and fix it.

 

I want to start coding that people can actually build off of and use, and this is just my start. 

pk