Mark has produced a marvel. The book introduces practical C++ programming with such spontaneity. The author sets the pitch beautifully with a step-by-step introduction of the need of advanced computing. It handholds reader as it expands from basic oops programming to designs and patterns in computing while mentioning rare tips on efficiency requirements when pricing derivatives versus robust programming.

The book is elegantly written with precise explanations and very concise (and very practical). It comes with the code as well.

As the other reviewer pointed out, the book has written for specific purpose and the focus is not diluted throughout (for example, it did not expand on quantitative issues which could have taken the book out of bounds which is a very big plus point). Even though the book is concise, it would require quite a lot of time to get the best out of it, because it is very dense on issues.

A must have book for anyone who is interested in Computational Finance (Quantitative Analyst/Developers, Financial Engineers, and Risk Managers). It filled a very big gap in this arena.

And this is written by a Practitioner Quant. Very well done Mark.

In terms of programming concepts and OOP design for financial engineering, this book has no equals. We have Daniel Duffy's Financial Instrument Pricing Using C++, but it takes a different approach (i.e. generic programming based in STL). All through the book, the author introduces improvements sequentially and doesn't start from the best design from the outset in order to demonstrate the flaws of a less general/useful/reusable program. In this sense, this is mainly a conceptual book, not an example book. For example, it deals with and develops vanilla-option pricing using Monte Carlo simulation over the first five chapters. A reader looking for a cookbook that gives programs to implement a large number of financial-derivative models would be well-advised to look elsewhere (e.g. Justin London's Modeling Derivatives in C++). However, someone looking for OOP wisdom would be generously rewarded for buying this book.

This small book (192 pages) is pretty expensive but if it brings you a lot it is OK.

It depends what you are looking at:

If you want a book "how to write a clean C++ program", this book is for you. The authors enhance the formal (and correct) writing you should have when coding.

If you are interested in understand and solve the various problems you encounter implementing derivatives with numerous examples, it is not the good book for you. There are few programs so few examples and solutions. Moreover I have to dig in his classes to understand them. I would have preferred static functions, even if I have to do a little work to implement them in my library.

However from my point of view, the biggest reproach to this book is that it does not treat the interest rate derivatives at all, which is really problematic.

So it was not really interesting. The Clewlow was much better for me.