   Is this book any good???
  I have been reading a lot on C++ and recently downloaded the visual studio express to start practicing. I read and watched different tutorials want to start making a pong game or pac-man. somthing real simple to get use to game programming and i want to know if this book:  Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach  by frank lunais actually any good to start learning with graphics. I am using Direct 10X because i want a job in the gaming industry at some point. So can anybody help me out?   
  Well if you want to use DX10, then you'll surely want the DX10 version of the book. A lot of things are common between both versions but since there is a DX10 version of the book, it seems odd to buy the DX9 version to learn DX10.Having said that, I do think I should possibly point out that your question is, in my opinion, somewhat flawed, in so much as you presuppose that you're ready to start learning about graphics. If you've only just downloaded Visual Studio, and you're only just starting to learn C++, I'd argue that you're six months away from even doing something simple with graphics. You need a good six months of getting to grips with C++. Even then, I'd argue that you'd be better off looking at something like SFML or HGE to do your graphics, even in six months.If you want to learn properly, and you want to do this professionally, you need to learn things in the right order, or you're going to find yourself tied up in a horrible pickle, unsure whether you're confused about DirectX or shader programming, or C++ or the windows API.So yes, it's a very good book, yes, it's very well suited to help someone learn DirectX 9, but you need to learn C++ first, and you probably want to use an existing 2D engine after that before you're really ready to learn DirectX 10. You can ignore this advice and jump right in, but the trouble with jumping right in is that you can easily get out of your depth and flounder.   ;  thanks for the advice i'll follow it. I just figure that the best way to learn is by trial and error, but what u said does make sense...Thanks   