You mean somewhat similar to the programming language the same person developed?
You may find his book "Principles and Practice Using C++" [1] more accessible.
You nailed it with that analogy though.
K&R is a "first book" and important historically, but right now it's an atrocious book if you want to learn current C and this has been the case for a long, long time.
Sometimes these first books don't withstand the test of time.
K&R may be archaic now, even obsolete. However, for decades it has was held up as a an example of what a good technical/language book could be. You don't have to agree with the assessment to agree with the fact - that this was touted as a very good technical book for various reasons.
There never was a "K&R" of C++. That's not unusual, many languages are in the same boat. If you want to go back to the "firsts" it would be a combination of The C++ Primer and Strousoup, putting them together gave you something that was both more and less that K&R was for C.
From the software engineering point of view, almost every single code example is terrible. Abundant implicit casts depending on the OS, loops that leak buffered reading between iterations, etc etc.
Just no. Never, ever recommend K&R to anybody as a general programming book neither for C or in general. Only the intro descriptions of language characteristics and important functions of the standard library are any use, and then again even these are extremely obsolete now.
There is, however (like or not), a reason we even now say "X is the K&R of Y". As such it is a bit silly to claim that the only reason K&R succeeded as well as it did was by being early....
Strongly disagree.
There's not a whole lot that's changed in C11, (C is kind of "done" at this point) and there's not been a newer book that teaches the language so well.
Not to be confused with C++ Primer Plus.
One drawback may be it's age; it's 17 years old. On the other hand it was way ahead of it's time and good writing doesn't get old.
(ps. I quite like Stroustrup's books but to each their own)
It's the worst programming book I have ever read! It's introduction made me hate C++ and if I didn't had to work with other C++ libraries, I would have avoided C++. The text is full of bloat, for the lack of better word. It's the opposite of crisp writing.
I read some good language books like K&R's C, Joe Armstrong's Erlang book. I loved them and I thought this would be in same league. It's not.
I would like to learn C++ systematically, like not cut-and-paste stuff. "How to think like a computer scientist: C++" seems like a good book. I read the book "How to think like a computer scientist", which is an introduction to programming in Python. I think that would be a good start. Is it a good book for experienced programmers wanting to learn C++?
To people wanting to learn C++, please avoid Stoustrop's book like Plague.
EDIT: I read "The C++ programming language 4th edition" which explains C++11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C%2B%2B_Programming_Langua...