[Timothypir2]

I agree with furtivefelon I once tryed to learn msma 6 from the refrence manual
you can't learn from a text book
sams teach yourself c++ 24h was prety bad but it did cover stuf what I did learn most from was writing a program that asigned numbers to words and compresssed plain text

[ever_thus]

furtivefelon has a point, but not completely. References are good when you know the stuff; you just need a reminder. If you're new you need someone to tell you what you can do and how to do it. The best approach is probably to use the book as a sort of reference plus; work on your own projects and consult the book every time you come across a problem that's outside your skill set.