Textbook

textbook cover Our textbook for CS 106B this quarter is the following:

Roberts, Eric S. Programming Abstractions in C++. ISBN 978-0133454840.

Purchasing:

Students can purchase the textbook from the Stanford University Bookstore, which is our recommended place to purchase this textbook. The book can also be ordered online from various retailers.

The book was written by a Stanford CS professor and targeted directly for this course, and it makes a useful supplement to the lecture and section presentations. Also, exams in this course will be open-book, so it will be advantageous to own the book for use as a reference during exams.

Problems will not be assigned directly out of the textbook. Our primary homework assignments don't come from the book either, and the provided lecture slides generally cover the necessary material. So it is possible to achieve success in this course without owning the textbook. However, we recommend that every student either owns a copy or has convenient access to a copy. For example, at least one copy of this textbook has been made available for checkout from the Stanford Library reserves.

In previous quarters, a preliminary "course reader" version of the textbook was available in printed and PDF form (linked below). This older version might be usable for you in CS 106B this quarter, but some of its content is missing or less polished. Also, you will not be able to use the digital version on your exams, so it will be less useful than the physical textbook. (There is a printed version of the "course reader" from last year that is bound with a colored cover and spiral ringed binding; this is allowed to be used during the exams. But you may not print a copy on loose paper for use on exams, because it is too hard to distinguish from other printed handouts and materials.) We are not able to officially provide support for the course reader/PDF version of the book and will not provide help with mapping reading sections, page numbers, problem numbers, etc. from the old version to the current version.

This document and its content are copyright © Marty Stepp, 2018. All rights reserved. Any redistribution, reproduction, transmission, or storage of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited without the authors' expressed written permission.