Im a freshman in college and just finished my second c++ programming course, this book was my best friend. It gives you plenty of ways to do a given task and covers a broad range of topics. Because it covers a broad range of topics, even if a specific "recipe" doesn't do exactly what you want, there is usually no trouble in changing/tweaking it ever so slightly to do what you want to do for a specific problem. It's very well written and easy to understand for the laymen to c++ (like me!!)