This is my first contact with the '21-days' series of books and this one, covering Visual C++ 6, also has some useful appendices, which will prolong its usefulness for at least 21 more days. Appendix A is devoted to C++ beginners while the others deal with more advanced topics.

The 21 days are divided into three main parts. The first is about event handling, menus, dialogue boxes, fonts and the environment itself. The second and third dive into things such as ActiveX, DLLs and file access.

To my delight I found an ambitious approach to database access, using both ODBC and ADO. However, the reader will feel a bit abandoned because the author uses a prepared Access database for these chapters, rather than an SQL script.

If you have Developer Studio Enterprise edition then you can create a simple Access database from within Visual Basic with the Visual Data tool, which will allow you to use these samples.

This is a book to work your way through. You will find a summary, Q&A and workshop for every day. Every 'week' (set of 7 chapters) begins with 'at a glance' and ends with 'in review'. Such arrangements truly help to tie things together and give a beginner the whole picture.

I have tested the sample code in VC++ 6 Enterprise Edition. Not all of it of course, but the ones I tested worked well. (I can't blame the author for some environment bugs).

Almost every chapter ends up in a complete application, also enhancing the pedagogic value and joy of working through the text.

Of course the reader will not end up as a fully-fledged Windows programmer, but for a thorough introduction to Visual C++ 6 I would recommend this text.