The contents of this book is NOT what the title saysand if I want to guess the target readers the authors had in mind, it is for a reader who never saw Windows before and just joined a computer science course, it teaches what is a variable,loops, arrays, and OOP, only until page 664 you will read window programming and that is almost 2/3 of the book and what you get at that point windows can run more than one program at the same time and you'll see a big picture (figure 20-4) windows running three applications as a proof!!!You will NEVER see .NET in this book other than in the book title.NOTHING complete in this "complete reference" no complete projects nor even how to compile them which is very essential for a beginner this defies classifying it for a beginner,I my self won't recommend it for a beginner, there are far better books that teaches C++ and windows programming.